Jake Maynard

— On the schedule —

One Module Three Transitions

Cryptographic implementers in the United States are navigating several overlapping transitions: the move from FIPS 140-2 to FIPS 140-3, the migration from CNSA 1.0 to CNSA 2.0, and the upcoming NIST 2030 algorithm transitions. Other jurisdictions are also managing their cryptographic transition policies, post-quantum timelines, certification requirements, and legacy deployments. The policy details differ, but the implementation challenge is similar: how can applications adapt to changing cryptographic requirements without duplicating compliance logic throughout the product? OpenSSL provides many of the building blocks for policy-driven cryptography, including configuration, providers, property queries, algorithm fetching, security levels, and FIPS-specific controls. This talk examines how those mechanisms have been used historically and explores how they can be taken further into a cryptographic policy control plane—allowing different regulatory, governmental, or organizational policies to be expressed above the application and enforced through a common OpenSSL-based architecture.