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Post Quantum Crypto Tech Blog
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Threat Modeling and Post Quantum Cryptography

MichaelHoward-MSFT's avatar
MichaelHoward-MSFT
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Aug 13, 2026

Organizations use threat modeling to analyze system designs, identify threats, and determine the controls needed to mitigate them. By examining components, data flows, and trust boundaries, threat models can also reveal where cryptography resides, what it protects, and which dependencies provide it—insight that is critical to planning a transition to post-quantum cryptography.

By Michael Howard (Azure Security PQC) and Simone Curzi (Azure Data Platform Security) The transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) introduces a new challenge: organizations must first underst...
Updated Aug 13, 2026
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AndreaGarrymore
Copper Contributor
Oct 24, 2026

Michael and Simone, this is the missing half of most crypto inventories. We made our inventory part of the build: if code uses a primitive the inventory doesn’t list, or the inventory lists something the code no longer does, CI fails. But you’re right that scanning can’t see everything. Platform TLS, identity-provider tokens and keys a vendor manages never show up in a code scan. So those go in as design-level entries the threat model owns, marked vendor-managed, with an owner and a plan, and the scanner can’t delete them. Scanning keeps the list honest; threat modeling keeps it complete. We’ve been through SHA-1, TLS 1.0 and hard-coded DES; the teams that struggled most were the ones who couldn’t find their crypto.