DGA MI, Secure-IC and SERMA Present NYMPHEAS at the Rennes PQC Workshop, 18 November 2026, as NIST's Third Round Drops to Eight Candidates After HAWK Withdraws: TRL 3

On 18 November 2026 Kirsten Wilk of Secure-IC presents NYMPHEAS at the Rennes PQC Workshop, an upstream study run with DGA MI, the information-mastery center of France's defense procurement agency, and the test laboratory SERMA. The program abstract states that the study compares alternative post-quantum signatures whose security foundations differ radically from the standardized lattice schemes, covering Dilithium, SDitH, UOV, FAEST and HuFu, on a software implementation written independently of the reference code. The post sets this beside NIST IR 8610 of 14 May 2026, which advanced nine candidates to a third round, and NIST's round-three page, which by 13 October 2026 showed HAWK withdrawn by its own team, leaving eight. It reads the study as defensive post-quantum signature selection in the standards and certification sub-branch at TRL 3, explains why the FPGA claims in press coverage stay unconfirmed until the talk, and lists the measurements, hardware results, ANSSI certification profile and NIST decision a program office should wait for.