Quantum computers are on track to break the encryption most networks run on today, and the “harvest now, decrypt later” clock is already ticking. Hillstone Networks just answered with a full post-quantum cryptography (PQC) solution, delivered through an StoneOS upgrade.
Comprehensive PQC Coverage — Protecting Every Layer, Not Just One
A network has multiple distinct traffic “planes”: the management plane (how admins log in and configure devices), the data plane (how traffic actually moves through VPN tunnels), and the access plane (how users and devices get authenticated in a Zero Trust setup). Each of these typically has its own encryption in play.
Hillstone extends PQC protection across all three planes at once. HTTPS and SSH administrative channels get quantum-safe protection on the management plane. IPsec VPN tunnels are covered on the data plane. And ZTNA brings PQC to the access plane, protecting how users and devices connect in the first place.
Instead of patching PQC into isolated corners of the network, security teams get one coordinated framework that closes the gap across administrative access, site-to-site and remote traffic, and user access simultaneously — a much harder target for harvest-now-decrypt-later to exploit.
Quantum-Readiness Visibility — Because Migration Is a Marathon, Not a Toggle
Without visibility into where you actually stand, migration projects tend to stall or drift. Security teams end up guessing which systems are covered, audits become a scramble to reconstruct evidence after the fact, and leadership can’t get a straight answer about progress.
StoneOS adds PQC operations visualization, an AI-powered operations assistant, and dedicated reporting tools — giving security teams a multi-dimensional view of exactly where their quantum readiness stands.
Teams can spot migration gaps before an auditor does, track progress over time instead of relying on tribal knowledge, and produce clear readiness reporting for leadership and regulators alike. It turns “we think we’re mostly covered” into an actual, defensible answer.
ASIC-Accelerated PQC — Quantum-Safe Without the Performance Tax
This is the objection that quietly stalls a lot of PQC migration plans: security teams worry that turning on stronger cryptography will tank VPN throughput right when the business needs it most. Nobody wants to trade a quantum-safe future for a slow, bottlenecked network today.
Hillstone pairs PQC’s traffic forwarding process with its proprietary ASIC technology, which accelerates PQC tunnel traffic in dedicated hardware rather than leaning on the general-purpose CPU.
Organizations get to adopt stronger, quantum-resistant cryptography without turning the migration into a network performance bottleneck. The security upgrade and the performance conversation don’t have to compete with each other.
Quantum computing isn’t a someday problem — the data being harvested today is the data at risk tomorrow, and the compliance clock is already running in multiple jurisdictions. Hillstone’s PQC solution gives security-sensitive organizations a genuinely practical way to start closing that gap: coverage across every traffic plane, real visibility into migration progress, and hardware acceleration so the upgrade doesn’t come at the cost of performance. It’s also a natural fit with where Hillstone’s security architecture is headed more broadly — toward a Hybrid Mesh Firewall model that keeps protection consistent across on-prem, cloud, and edge environments rather than confined to a single box.
For more details, reach out to Hillstone Networks representative.
