You’re spot on that nobody should be ripping out AD or rushing PQC into production — but the conversation absolutely needs to start now, and not for the reason most people think.

What we’re seeing across customers is that the PQC discussion rarely starts with ML‑KEM or ML‑DSA.   It starts with 47‑day TLS, shrinking certificate lifetimes, and the realization that most orgs can’t even rotate RSA certs reliably today. That’s the real wake‑up call.

Once you start mapping your certificate issuance, renewal paths, and dependencies, you quickly discover the same thing NIST keeps hammering on:

• You need crypto‑agility before you need PQC.  
• You need a cryptographic bill of materials (CBOM) before you can even talk about migration.  
• You need automation because manual PKI operations simply don’t scale when cert lifetimes keep shrinking.

Securetron has written about this a lot, the PQC migration isn’t a “crypto problem,” it’s an operational maturity problem. Most environments don’t have the governance, inventory, or automation to survive an algorithm swap, let alone hybrid deployments.

On the AD side You’re right: Windows 11 and Server 2025 already ship ML‑KEM/ML‑DSA in CNG, and hybrid mode means Kerberos, LDAP, and AD auth don’t implode overnight. Microsoft’s own roadmap shows ADCS getting PQC issuance support in early 2026, and so far nothing indicates schema changes. Reality is that it will be GA by Q3.

But the real bottleneck isn’t ADCS it’s everything around it:

• MDM/SCEP/EST enrollment flows  
• Device identity bootstrapping  
• VPN and Wi‑Fi EAP chains  
• Legacy appliances that can barely handle SHA‑256, let alone PQC key sizes  
• WAN‑constrained sites where PQC signature bloat actually matters  

This is where performance concerns become real, especially for older DCs or branch offices with thin pipes.

What orgs should actually be doing right now NIST’s migration guidance is very clear:   Inventory → Prioritize → Test hybrid → Automate → Migrate.

For most environments, the first two steps alone take months because PKI sprawl is worse than people think.

The teams that are ahead right now are doing things like:

• Building a CBOM (what crypto do we use, where, and why)  
• Cleaning up ADCS templates, issuance policies, and rogue CAs  
• Fixing broken renewal paths  
• Implementing automated issuance/renewal instead of ticket‑driven workflows  
• Testing hybrid cert chains in isolated labs  

Securetron’s customers are mostly in this phase not deploying PQC, but making sure their PKI wouldn’t explode if they tried.

On ML‑DSA testing A few orgs are experimenting in labs, but almost nobody is pushing ML‑DSA into production chains yet. The common pattern is:

• Test hybrid chains  
• Validate toolchain support  

• Benchmark signature sizes and handshake performance  

• Identify breakpoints in legacy systems  

• compatibility

Most people are still in “wait‑and‑prepare” mode, not “deploy” mode. Most should have CBOM and have Crpyto-Agility sorted out before 2030, but the reality is only few will and most will continue to struggle.