Is your REST API actually Quantum-Safe? How to test it in 2026.

The 2026 Reality: Why PQC Matters Now If you’ve been seeing the term Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) pop up in your security audits lately, there’s a reason for it. We’ve officially entered the era where traditional encryption (like RSA and ECC) is no longer considered "future-proof." The "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" (HNDL) Threat You might think, "I don't need to worry about quantum computers yet; they aren't powerful enough to break my API today." That is a dangerous assumption. Threat actors are currently practicing HNDL: they are intercepting and storing encrypted traffic today, waiting for the day a quantum computer is powerful enough to crack it. If your API is sending sensitive user data or long-lived secrets using classical encryption right now, that data is effectively a "time bomb" waiting to be decrypted in the future. This is why NIST standardized ML-KEM (FIPS 203). It’s a quantum-resistant algorithm designed to protect data against these future threats. But as developers,