Key Details
What: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has constituted an eight-member Expert Committee for a Quantum Secure and Adaptive Financial Ecosystem (Q-SAFE).
Purpose: Assess and secure India’s banking and payment infrastructure against emerging post-quantum cryptographic threats.
Leadership: Dr. Anil Prabhakar (IIT Madras) serves as Convener, while Shri Suvendu Pati (RBI FinTech Department) functions as Member-Secretary.
Institutional Composition: Committee includes representatives from RBI, NPCI, IIT Madras, SBI, MeitY, DST, DSCI, and quantum technology experts.
Core Mandate: Conduct a sector-wide diagnostic audit using a Cryptography Bill of Materials (CBOM) and evaluate financial-sector crypto-agility.
Operational Tasks: Benchmark international regulatory practices, assess the scalability of post-quantum cybersecurity tools, and design a phased transition framework.
Timeline: The committee is required to submit its policy report within six months of its inaugural meeting.
Summary
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has officially constituted an eight-member high-level panel titled the Expert Committee for a Quantum Secure and Adaptive Financial Ecosystem (Q-SAFE). Administered through the central bank’s FinTech Department, the committee is tasked with future-proofing India’s financial architecture against emerging quantum-era cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
While quantum computing promises transformative computational advantages for finance—including portfolio optimization, advanced risk assessment, and high-speed macroeconomic simulations—it simultaneously poses a systemic security challenge. Powerful quantum systems may eventually possess the capability to break conventional public-key cryptographic algorithms currently protecting banking transactions, corporate accounts, digital payment systems, and cross-border financial clearances.
The committee therefore represents an early institutional effort to prepare India’s financial ecosystem for a post-quantum cybersecurity environment.
The Q-SAFE panel combines expertise from academia, banking operations, cybersecurity governance, digital payments, and government technology policy.
The committee is led by Dr. Anil Prabhakar, Professor at IIT Madras, serving as Convener, with Shri Suvendu Pati, Chief General Manager of RBI’s FinTech Department, acting as Member-Secretary.
Its wider membership includes:
Shri Dilip Asbe, MD & CEO, NPCI, representing India’s digital payments infrastructure.
Shri Satish Rao Nagesh, DMD, State Bank of India, providing commercial banking insight.
Shri Vinayak Godse, CEO, Data Security Council of India, contributing cybersecurity expertise.
Shri Sunil Kumar (DST) and Shri Manoj Kumar Jain (MeitY), linking sovereign technology and digital governance policy.
Dr. L. Venkata Subramaniam, former IBM Quantum India Head, providing industrial quantum computing expertise.
Auditing the Financial System for Quantum Vulnerabilities
The committee’s Terms of Reference (ToR) empower it to undertake a comprehensive diagnostic audit of India’s financial-sector cryptographic infrastructure.
A central task involves mapping banking assets through a Cryptography Bill of Materials (CBOM) to evaluate overall crypto-agility—the capacity of systems to identify, replace, and upgrade vulnerable encryption methods.
The committee will additionally conduct cross-country regulatory comparisons, examine the maturity and scalability of post-quantum cybersecurity vendors, and develop a phased roadmap to secure India’s banking and digital payment systems against future quantum-enabled decryption threats.
The panel has been assigned a strict six-month timeline to finalize and submit its policy recommendations.
What is a “Cryptography Bill of Materials” (CBOM)?
A Cryptography Bill of Materials (CBOM) is a structured inventory documenting all cryptographic algorithms, encryption keys, certificates, protocols, and security dependencies embedded within an organisation’s digital infrastructure.
Similar to an industrial bill of materials used in manufacturing, a CBOM creates a transparent ledger of encryption assets across software and hardware systems. In banking and national cybersecurity planning, this inventory forms the foundation for achieving crypto-agility by helping security teams identify and replace vulnerable legacy cryptographic standards before quantum-capable systems can exploit them.
Policy Relevance:
The constitution of the Q-SAFE committee signals a shift from reactive cybersecurity management toward anticipatory financial-system resilience planning.
The initiative introduces a structured pathway for Indian regulators and banking institutions to assess whether existing cryptographic protections remain viable in a rapidly evolving computational environment.
The proposed use of CBOM-based audits may enable financial institutions to identify hidden encryption dependencies and transition toward post-quantum cryptographic standards in a more systematic manner.
The committee’s multi-sectoral composition also creates an institutional bridge between central banking, digital payments, cybersecurity governance, and scientific research, potentially strengthening coordination across India’s broader digital public infrastructure ecosystem.
By evaluating both the opportunities and risks associated with quantum technologies, the RBI’s initiative seeks to balance technological innovation with systemic financial security.
Relevant Question for Policy Stakeholders: How can India develop a coordinated transition framework that enables banks and payment systems to adopt post-quantum cryptography without disrupting digital financial inclusion and payment reliability?
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