Presented by Qanapi & Carahsoft
Government information can remain sensitive long after the technology protecting it has changed. Martin Rieger, Chief Solutions Officer at Qanapi, said agencies need the ability to adapt their encryption approaches as threats and requirements evolve. That capability, known as cryptographic agility, was a central theme of his conversation with Fed Gov Today at the Google Public Sector Summit.
Rieger described agility as the ability to swap or change cryptographic protections without treating every change as a separate, extensive rebuilding effort. Agencies hold large collections of systems and data, making the capacity to update protection an operational concern as well as a technical one.
He connected that need to the risk of adversaries collecting encrypted information today in hopes of decrypting it later. For organizations responsible for information with a long useful life, protecting the transmission of a document is only part of the problem. They also have to consider how that information remains protected over time.
The growth of AI adds another reason to examine those protections. Rieger described trust as involving the information supplied to a system, the people accessing it, and the AI processing it. A weakness in any one of those areas can affect the usefulness or security of the resulting work.
He also emphasized that organizations should make deliberate choices about which information an AI system can see. Some material may be useful for analysis, while sensitive portions require protection. Rieger discussed approaches intended to protect those portions before processing and restore authorized access when information is returned.
That focus on data control also shaped his description of Qanapi Flow, a collection of tools for Google Workspace. Rieger said the tools were developed to support secure information exchange involving government organizations and their partners, including businesses handling sensitive material.
He described client-side encryption as one capability, allowing organizations to protect information before it is available to the service provider. He also discussed controlled views of a shared document, with different recipients able to see different information according to their access. That can reduce the need to circulate multiple versions of the same material.
Usability is important to that approach. Rieger said the goal was to make secure collaboration easier to establish and use. Organizations supporting government missions may have limited time to configure complex tools, even when the information they handle requires substantial protection.
The interview brought together long-term encryption planning and daily collaboration needs. Agencies need ways to change protections as requirements develop, while employees and partners need practical methods for sharing information now. Rieger’s argument was that a focus on the data can connect those priorities. Protecting information where it is used and exchanged gives organizations a basis for adapting security without losing sight of the work their people have to accomplish. Cryptographic agility becomes part of maintaining that protection over the information’s useful life.