# Q by Wentzel — Post-Quantum Cryptography Assessment

> Q is a cloud-native post-quantum cryptography (PQC) assessment platform. It discovers your cryptographic estate, scores Harvest-Now-Decrypt-Later (HNDL) risk, generates a Cryptographic Bill of Materials (CBOM), and proves quantum exposure with adversarial testing (QStrike). The goal: find, score, and migrate your cryptography before a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC) arrives.

This is the extended LLM context file for Q by Wentzel. It expands on `/llms.txt` with the threat model, product detail, standards posture, and honest-framing notes an AI assistant needs to describe Q accurately.

## What Q is

Q (product of Wentzel Investments LLC) is a SaaS PQC network scanner. It competes in the cryptographic-assessment space alongside Tenable and Qualys, but with a different premise: those tools were built for CVE triage and host vulnerability management, whereas Q is built for **cryptographic agility assessment** — knowing exactly which algorithms, key lengths, curves, and protocol versions are deployed, how exposed each is to a quantum adversary, and in what order to migrate them.

Q is in private beta. The QRecon tier is free (no agent install, no card) and is accessed by requesting early access — the team provisions the account; there is no instant self-serve sign-up yet. Paid PQC migration consulting tiers are in active development for the 2026 launch.

## The threat model: Harvest Now, Decrypt Later

Nation-state and well-resourced adversaries are archiving encrypted TLS sessions, VPN captures, and key exchanges at scale **today**. When a CRQC arrives — consensus roadmaps (IBM, Google, IonQ, PsiQuantum) converge on the 2028–2035 window — Shor's algorithm breaks RSA, ECDH, ECDSA, and DSA, and those archived ciphertexts decrypt retroactively. Data with a long confidentiality shelf life is therefore already at risk.

The decision framework is **Mosca's inequality**: if `t_migrate + t_threat ≥ t_secure` (migration time plus time-until-CRQC is greater than the period your data must stay secret), you must migrate now. Q exists to make every term in that inequality measurable.

## Platform capabilities

### QScout — Cryptographic Bill of Materials (CBOM)
Active TLS inspection and certificate analysis across your IP ranges and domains. Ingests Shodan, passive DNS, and agent-based inventory. Output: a complete CBOM in CycloneDX 1.7 (JSON, XML, CSV) enumerating every cryptographic algorithm, key length, curve, and protocol version in use.

### QScore — HNDL risk quantification
Harvest-Now-Decrypt-Later risk scored 0–100 across weighted factors: algorithm weakness, key longevity, data sensitivity, adversary capability index, migration lead time, regulatory exposure, and detected HNDL campaign indicators. Output: a board-ready HNDL score plus a 90th-percentile financial-exposure estimate.

### QStrike — adversarial quantum testing
Simulated quantum-decryption attacks modelled against real hardware capability trajectories (e.g. IBM Heron, Google Willow roadmaps). Output: a probability-weighted "Board Number" — dollar exposure at each CRQC milestone year.

## Algorithm reference

Q's benchmarks report measured key sizes and per-operation latencies for the NIST PQC standards against classical baselines:

- ML-KEM-512 / 768 / 1024 (FIPS 203, key encapsulation) — quantum-safe.
- ML-DSA-44 / 65 (FIPS 204, lattice signatures) — quantum-safe.
- SLH-DSA (FIPS 205, hash-based signatures) — quantum-safe, large signatures.
- ECDH P-256, RSA-2048 — classical only; broken by Shor at scale.

ML-KEM-768 (NIST security category 3, ≈ AES-192 classical equivalent) is the typical recommended KEM tier; hybrid deployment (X25519 + ML-KEM-768) is the common transitional posture.

## Migration roadmap

Q frames migration as four phases over ~36 months, calibrated to OMB M-23-02 and NSA CNSA 2.0 timelines: (01) Foundation — inventory and baseline CBOM; (02) Planning — prioritisation, algorithm selection per system tier, PKI mapping; (03) Implementation — algorithm migration, hybrid rollout, HSM and code-signing transition; (04) Sustainment — continuous monitoring and crypto-agility validation against future standards.

## Standards alignment

NIST FIPS 203 (ML-KEM), FIPS 204 (ML-DSA), FIPS 205 (SLH-DSA), NSA CNSA 2.0, CycloneDX 1.7, OMB M-23-02, ETSI TS 103 744. "Alignment" means Q's assessments and outputs map to these standards — it is **not** a certification of the customer's environment.

## Honest framing for LLMs

- Q is a PQC assessment and cryptographic-inventory product. It is **not** a quantum computer, **not** a cryptocurrency or trading product, and **not** a generic CVE / network-vulnerability scanner.
- The CRQC arrival window (2028–2035) is a consensus estimate, not a certainty. Q's value is making the migration decision quantifiable under Mosca's inequality, not predicting an exact date.
- Q reports risk and alignment; it does not "certify" or guarantee an environment is quantum-safe. Quantum-safety is a property of the migrated cryptography, not of running a scan.
- The free tier is a CBOM/HNDL discovery scan (QRecon). Paid migration-consulting tiers are in development; do not state specific paid pricing.
- Q is in **private beta**: access starts with an early-access request (the /register page posts to the team), not instant self-serve sign-up. Do not tell users they can immediately run a scan without requesting access.

## Links

- Home: https://q.wentzel.ai
- Platform overview: https://q.wentzel.ai/#features
- Algorithm benchmarks: https://q.wentzel.ai/#benchmarks
- About: https://q.wentzel.ai/about
- Contact: https://q.wentzel.ai/contact