Abstract Traditional and lightweight cryptography primitives and protocols are insecure against quantum attacks. Thus, a real‐time application using traditional or lightweight cryptography primitives and protocols does not ensure full‐proof security. Post‐quantum cryptography is important for the internet of things (IoT) due to its security against quantum attacks. This paper offers a broad literature analysis of post‐quantum cryptography for IoT networks, including the challenges and research directions to adopt in real‐time applications. The work draws focus towards post‐quantum cryptosystems that are useful for resource‐constraint devices. Further, those quantum attacks are surveyed, which may occur over traditional and lightweight cryptographic primitives.
Abstract Traditional and lightweight cryptography primitives and protocols are insecure against quantum attacks. Thus, a real‐time application using traditional or lightweight cryptography primitives and protocols does not ensure full‐proof security. Post‐quantum cryptography is important for the internet of things (IoT) due to its security against quantum attacks. This paper offers a broad literature analysis of post‐quantum cryptography for IoT networks, including the challenges and research directions to adopt in real‐time applications. The work draws focus towards post‐quantum cryptosystems that are useful for resource‐constraint devices. Further, those quantum attacks are surveyed, which may occur over traditional and lightweight cryptographic primitives.
Abstract As the number and characteristics of smart devices change, the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) emerges. The IoT provides the connected devices with a variety of resources that enable effective communication. At this point, several security issues arise to get the sensitive information behind every communication in the IoT. To provide users with security and privacy, cryptographic schemes are adopted, the most popular being public key cryptographic systems (PKC). However, with the advent of quantum computing, the level of security that can be provided by the PKC schemes is a big question. Another important issue is that the IoT environment is resource‐constrained, which necessitates the implementation of lightweight cryptographic algorithms for better security. In response to these issues, the post‐quantum cryptographic (PQC) schemes are one of the significant developments contributing to IoT security in the post‐quantum world. This article examines the key security issues in the IoT environment and examines the effective solutions found in the literature. The problems in IoT in the quantum era are discussed and appropriate solutions by PKC schemes under limited resources in IoT are focused. As the lattice‐based cryptosystems are more effective, the importance of these schemes in the resource‐constrained IoT is highlighted. This survey also leads to feasible future directions that can support developers and researchers in this field.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized the way devices communicate and interact, enabling seamless integration into various aspects of daily life by billions of connected devices equipped with small, embedded controllers that monitor and manage our increasingly interconnected world. The swift growth of IoT devices has led to significant concerns about data security and privacy. Traditional cryptographic algorithms, usually lightweight cryptography, are effective against classical computing threats. However, they are vulnerable to attacks from emerging quantum computing technologies, which can quickly solve the mathematically hard problems used in classical cryptography. Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) offers promising solution by providing cryptographic primitives resistant to quantum attacks. This chapter addresses challenges posed by resource constrained IoT devices, like limited processing power and memory. It also explores the integration of PQC algorithms suitable for IoT environments, considering factors like computational efficiency and resistance to quantum attacks.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has grown rapidly, transforming various aspects of daily life into intelligent systems capable of collecting and exchanging data in real time. At the same time, advances in quantum computing have given rise to powerful quantum computers capable of processing complex tasks at unprecedented speed. This disparity between the limited resources of IoT devices and the capabilities of quantum computers poses significant security challenges. Quantum computers introduce new vulnerabilities that threaten IoT systems, particularly in critical applications such as connected healthcare, industrial networks, smart infrastructure, and secure embedded systems. This study reviews the existing literature on post-quantum cryptography (PQC) applied to IoT devices. It analyzes the characteristics and security requirements of IoT environments, current security technologies, and unresolved issues. It highlights the growing threat of post-quantum attacks and the need to adapt security strategies. Finally, the study explores post-quantum code-based cryptosystems as solutions to enhance the security of resource-constrained IoT applications and ensure their resilience against future challenges.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is involved in almost every industry, paving the way for innovative applications, including smart cities, intelligent systems, smart homes, smart agriculture, healthcare, and more. However, due to their asset value, these applications are under continuous and evolving cyberattacks. Furthermore, the advent of quantum computing presents a severe threat to traditional cryptographic methods that typically secure IoT systems, potentially rendering existing security mechanisms ineffective against quantum-enabled attacks. To tackle quantum-enabled and traditional cyberattacks, post-quantum cryptography (PQC) has emerged as a promising solution for providing future-proof security for IoT devices and networks against the quantum computing threat. PQC algorithms can resist cyberattacks from classical and quantum computers, ensuring long-term security solutions. This article explores the integration of PQC into practical IoT systems. It highlights the vulnerabilities of classical cryptographic methods and the necessity of transitioning to quantum-resistant solutions. Moreover, the implementation of PQC on IoT systems is analyzed. By proactively exploring the opportunities and challenges associated with PQC, this research lays out future directions for implementing robust, scalable, and secure IoT systems.
The Internet of Things (IoT) now underpins critical systems like healthcare monitors, smart home, smart grids, automotive V2V & V2X networks, and industrial controls but it still relies on classical cryptography, whose security assumptions are vulnerable to quantum computers. A large quantum computer could run Shor’s algorithm to break RSA/ECC and use Grover’s algorithm to accelerate brute-forcing of symmetric keys, undermining the confidentiality and authentication of data in these IoT applications. Researchers have proposed quantum cryptographic solutions. Quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum random number generators (QRNGs) exploit quantum mechanics to detect eavesdropping and deliver provably secure key material. For example, chip-scale QRNGs can be embedded in IoT sensors to generate true random keys, boosting resistance to brute-force attacks. These quantum techniques provide information-theoretic secrecy, for instance, QKD-generated keys have been used to authenticate smart-grid SCADA. However, most IoT devices are resource-constrained, making direct deployment of conventional QKD hardware challenging. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) complements quantum methods by providing algorithms such as lattice-based, hash-based that resist quantum attacks on existing hardware. Standardized PQC can be deployed via software updates on legacy IoT nodes, enabling scalable and quantum-safe security within current constraints. Researchers are exploring lightweight PQC for connected cars and e-health sensors. Hybrid approaches combining QKD/QRNG with PQC offer a layered defense. Since QKD protocols are regarded as ‘future-proof’ and PQC standards mature, their combined use will be essential for robust, quantum-safe IoT security. Miniaturizing quantum components such as integrated QKD/QRNG modules and optimizing lightweight PQC schemes for low-power IoT devices are future research directions to secure IoT networks.
Although quantum computing is still in its nascent age, its evolution threatens the most popular public-key encryption systems. Such systems are essential for today's Internet security due to their ability for solving the key distribution problem and for providing high security in insecure communications channels that allow for accessing websites or for exchanging e-mails, financial transactions, digitally signed documents, military communications or medical data. Cryptosystems like Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA), elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) or Diffie-Hellman have spread worldwide and are part of diverse key Internet standards like Transport Layer Security (TLS), which are used both by traditional computers and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. It is especially difficult to provide high security to IoT devices, mainly because many of them rely on batteries and are resource constrained in terms of computational power and memory, which implies that specific energy-efficient and lightweight algorithms need to be designed and implemented for them. These restrictions become relevant challenges when implementing cryptosystems that involve intensive mathematical operations and demand substantial computational resources, which are often required in applications where data privacy has to be preserved for the long term, like IoT applications for defense, mission-critical scenarios or smart healthcare. Quantum computing threatens such a long-term IoT device security and researchers are currently developing solutions to mitigate such a threat. This article provides a survey on what can be called post-quantum IoT systems (IoT systems protected from the currently known quantum computing attacks): the main post-quantum cryptosystems and initiatives are reviewed, the most relevant IoT architectures and challenges are analyzed, and the expected future trends are indicated. Thus, this article is aimed at providing a wide view of post-quantum IoT security and give useful guidelines to the future post-quantum IoT developers.