The Road Ahead to a Fully Post-Quantum Internet

Bas Westerbaan, principal research engineer, is Cloudflare’s technical lead on the effort to migrate the company and the Internet at large to post-quantum cryptography (PQC). His work encompasses the entire migration lifecycle, from cryptographic design, engineering, standardisation to large-scale experimentation and real-world deployment. He plays a key role in making the Internet post-quantum secure. A mathematician by trade, Bas’ doctoral research at the Radboud University digital security group focussed on the foundations of quantum theory. There he also contributed to crypto-engineering for various privacy projects. After a post doctoral position at UCL, he made the move to industry. His strong theoretical grounding informs his practical work in cryptographic engineering. Bas is a prolific author of academic papers and blog posts, demonstrating his expertise and thought leadership in post-quantum cryptography and related fields. His publications cover a range of subjects including hybrid KEMs (X-Wing), private SCT auditing, Merkle Tree Certificates for TLS, and the state of the post-quantum internet. He frequently collaborates with other prominent researchers and contributes to standards, underscoring his influence in the cryptographic community.