A score without interpretation is noise. You can complete a PQC risk assessment, receive a number, and still have no idea which workstream to open first, which executive to brief, or whether the most pressing problem is your data retention policy or your legacy HSM estate. The score is the start of the conversation, not the answer to it.
QSECDEF's Post-Quantum Risk Assessment runs nine questions across five scored factors, returns a result across four risk bands, and includes prioritised recommendations that vary by factor profile. The value is not in the band label. It is in understanding which of the five factors is driving the score, because that determines where your migration programme should begin.
Why the Five Factors Were Chosen
The tool's scoring model draws on NIST IR 8413 (Status Report on the Third Round of the NIST PQC Standardisation Process, 2022), NIST SP 1800-38 (NCCoE PQC Migration Project guidance), NSA CNSA 2.0 transition timelines (September 2022), and NCSC quantum migration planning guidance (2024). The five factors (cryptographic exposure, data longevity, trust dependence, regulatory pressure, and migration difficulty) correspond to the four dimensions of PQC migration planning NIST identifies: what is vulnerable, how urgent is the data risk, what are the external compliance constraints, and how hard is migration.
Sector selection adjusts the weighting of those factors to match the documented risk distribution for the relevant industry. A defence contractor and a retail financial services organisation can score identically on the five factors and face materially different risk profiles. The tool applies sector-specific weightings because the guidance documents themselves treat sectors differently: CNSA 2.0 and CMMC create higher Trust Dependence and Regulatory Pressure exposure for defence; DORA and long-lived financial records create higher Data Longevity and Regulatory Pressure exposure for financial services. The weighting adjustment is not decoration. It reflects how the published frameworks distribute risk.
Factor 1: Cryptographic Exposure
Cryptographic exposure measures the breadth of dependence on public-key cryptography that a CRQC would break. Organisations with extensive internal PKI deployments, VPN gateways, code-signing infrastructure, and application-layer RSA dependencies face a broader migration surface than organisations whose cryptography is primarily managed by third-party cloud services.
A high score on this factor does not mean migration is more urgent in terms of time. It means migration will take longer. The practical first action for a high-exposure organisation is not to begin migrating the most visible system immediately. It is to understand the full scope first. A broad migration surface without an inventory is exactly the scenario that produces Crypto Paralysis, where workstreams expanding faster than they can be resourced because hidden RSA dependencies surface throughout the programme. A high Cryptographic Exposure score drives the need for a structured cryptographic inventory before any migration workstream is opened.
Factor 2: Data Longevity
Data longevity addresses the confidentiality window of the most sensitive data the organisation holds and its intersection with the projected CRQC threat window under the Mosca inequality (Mosca, M., IEEE Security & Privacy, Vol. 16 No. 5, 2018). X + Y > Z: where X is migration time, Y is data confidentiality requirement, Z is expected CRQC arrival. When the inequality holds, migration should have already started.
This is the factor that changes the conversation in board-level risk discussions more reliably than any other. Abstract hardware timelines feel distant. The possibility that data your organisation encrypted three years ago (financial models, clinical records, communications under legal privilege) is sitting in an adversary's archive waiting for the hardware is not abstract. It is the Harvest Now, Decrypt Later (HNDL) risk, documented in the CISA/NSA/NIST joint advisory of August 2023 as an active concern for data with long confidentiality windows.
A high Data Longevity score does not make the overall migration problem bigger. It makes the starting point clearer. The first roadmap action for an organisation with a high longevity score is identifying which specific data stores carry the longest confidentiality windows and ensuring those are the first workstreams in the migration sequence.
Factor 3: Trust Dependence
Trust Dependence captures reliance on digital signature infrastructure: certificate authority hierarchies, firmware signing chains, secure boot, or code-signing workflows for internal software distribution. NIST standardised ML-DSA (FIPS 204, August 2024) and SLH-DSA (FIPS 205, August 2024) as the post-quantum targets for signature infrastructure. The migration is operationally distinct from the confidentiality migration: different infrastructure teams, different compliance timelines, different failure modes if the migration is incomplete.
An organisation with extensive firmware signing (a defence manufacturer or an industrial controls vendor, for example) may score high on Trust Dependence even with relatively moderate Cryptographic Exposure in its confidentiality infrastructure. The signature migration workstream must be planned and resourced independently. It cannot be treated as a subset of the TLS migration or subsumed into a broader certificate management programme. A high Trust Dependence score surfaces this explicitly in the tool's recommendations.
Factor 4: Regulatory Pressure
Regulatory Pressure reflects the pace and specificity of formal compliance obligations in the organisation's sector. NSA CNSA 2.0 (September 2022) sets 2030 as the migration deadline for prioritised national security systems. DORA (Regulation EU 2022/2554, effective January 2025) requires financial entities to maintain cryptographic dependency registers. NIS2 (Directive 2022/2555, entered into force January 2023, transposition deadline October 2024) places cryptographic agility under operational resilience obligations for in-scope organisations. The NCSC's 2024 quantum-safe cryptography guidance creates a direction-of-travel obligation for UK organisations even absent a specific statutory deadline.
The important distinction for roadmap prioritisation: high Regulatory Pressure constrains the migration sequence from the outside. The roadmap must be built backwards from the earliest compliance deadline, not sequenced by technical convenience. If the hardest migration components (legacy infrastructure, HSMs requiring physical replacement, air-gapped environments) sit on the critical path for meeting a compliance deadline, they must be started first. Regulatory pressure converts Migration Difficulty from a resourcing problem into a scheduling one.
Factor 5: Migration Difficulty
Migration Difficulty accounts for the architectural and operational constraints that determine how long the transition will actually take. Cloud-native organisations with managed cryptographic services can typically incorporate PQC algorithm support as hyperscaler platforms ship it. Organisations with significant legacy infrastructure, embedded systems, air-gapped environments, or HSMs requiring physical replacement face programmes measured in years.
NIST SP 1800-38 identifies legacy infrastructure as a primary migration complexity driver. A high Migration Difficulty score does not make the overall risk higher. It makes the available runway shorter. If the most complex migration workstreams require two to three years and a compliance deadline is 2030, the calculation about when to start is not a judgement call. It is arithmetic. High Migration Difficulty is the factor that most directly argues for starting immediately, regardless of how the other four factors score.
The Three Qualifier Questions
After the five scored factors, the tool asks three qualifier questions: current preparedness, supply chain dependency, and board awareness. These behave differently from the scored factors, and understanding the distinction matters for interpreting the output accurately.
Current preparedness applies a small score modifier to the base score. Supply chain dependency and board awareness shape the prioritised recommendations returned for the score band but do not alter the numeric score itself. Two organisations with identical factor scores may receive different recommendations depending on their supply chain exposure and governance posture. An organisation that reports no cryptographic inventory in progress will receive a recommendation to begin one before purchasing algorithm migration tooling. An organisation reporting heavy dependence on unassessed third-party cryptographic services will see a supply chain assessment workstream in its recommendations. The qualifier questions surface these structural gaps without changing the underlying risk score.
Using the Score in a Migration Programme Discussion
The tool's output translates into three things a CISO or programme manager can use directly.
The risk band communicates directional urgency without requiring the board or programme sponsor to parse factor details. It contextualises "we need budget for this" against a structured assessment rather than a subjective recommendation.
The factor breakdown identifies which dimension of risk is driving the score. This is the question that determines where budget goes first. A score driven primarily by Data Longevity points to HNDL exposure and long-lived data store prioritisation. A score driven by Migration Difficulty points to beginning the longest-lead migration workstreams immediately. The same overall band score can produce entirely different first actions depending on the factor profile.
The recommendations provide a starting point for building a programme brief or board submission. They are not a migration plan. They are the structured starting point for the internal prioritisation conversation.
One point worth making directly: the tool does not scan network infrastructure, inspect certificate stores, or connect to any system. It asks questions about organisational characteristics and scores responses. A high-accuracy result requires accurate inputs. An organisation that underestimates its legacy complexity or overstates its current preparedness will receive a score that underestimates its actual migration difficulty. The tool is a triage instrument, not an audit.
The Relationship Between Risk Assessment and Cryptographic Inventory
The NIST NCCoE PQC Migration Project (SP 1800-38A, 2024) places risk assessment and prioritisation as phase two of a four-phase framework, with inventory and discovery as phase one. The QSECDEF Post-Quantum Risk Assessment tool is designed to work at the interface between those phases: it is usable before an inventory is complete, and it will surface whether starting an inventory is among the priority recommendations for a given score profile.
For organisations that have not yet begun an inventory, the risk assessment score provides the directional basis for deciding where to focus the initial inventory workstreams. For organisations mid-inventory, the score provides a structured way to communicate urgency and factor-based priority to programme sponsors while the discovery work continues. The two activities are not sequential dependencies. They run in parallel, with the assessment informing the inventory's prioritisation sequence.
The NCSC's 2024 guidance on quantum-safe migration recommends a risk-based approach to migration prioritisation: systems handling the most sensitive long-lived data and those hardest to update should be prioritised. The Data Longevity and Migration Difficulty factors in the QSECDEF tool are the direct expression of that principle in a scored instrument.
Start With the Score
The QSECDEF Post-Quantum Risk Assessment is free, runs entirely in your browser, transmits no data, and requires no account. Nine questions. The result is a risk band, a factor-level breakdown of what is driving the score, and prioritised recommendations that reflect both your factor profile and your qualifier context. It does not certify compliance or produce a regulatory attestation. It produces a structured directional assessment that gives a migration programme a defensible starting point.
The score is the beginning of the prioritisation conversation, not the end of it. Use the factor breakdown to identify your first workstream. Use the recommendations to frame the board discussion. Use the cryptographic inventory articles in Cluster 9 for the methodology that follows.
QSECDEF members have access to practitioner-level implementation guides updated as NIST standards evolve, the cryptographic inventory methodology documentation, and the migration prioritisation frameworks our teams use with enterprises across sectors. If the risk assessment score produces a result that warrants a structured next step, the membership resources cover the methodology for each factor's prioritised workstream.
