The possible emergence of fault-tolerant quantum computers may enable widely used cryptographic algorithms to be broken. These algorithms for public key encryption and digital signatures could be exposed if an efficient algorithm is employed. This poses a threat to existing infrastructure, motivating the development of mechanisms that can withstand quantum-computer cybersecurity risks. However, the transition to new security mechanisms is still underway and faces many challenges, including identifying which applications are under threat and implementing agile, scalable migration processes. In this work, we survey the state of the art in quantum-safe cryptographic mechanisms, existing applications targeting migration, and open challenges. We examine the building blocks commonly used to integrate quantum-safe mechanisms into existing applications and categorize them by the security mechanisms they employ. Next, we systematically review existing migrations into quantum-safe schemes and categorize them by application domain, including Telecommunications, the Internet of Things, and Blockchains. Finally, we summarize the challenges that must be addressed to enable a successful migration to quantum-resistant mechanisms, as well as the motivations for pursuing this migration.
The possible emergence of fault-tolerant quantum computers may enable widely used cryptographic algorithms to be broken. These algorithms for public key encryption and digital signatures could be exposed if an efficient algorithm is employed. This poses a threat to existing infrastructure, motivating the development of mechanisms that can withstand quantum-computer cybersecurity risks. However, the transition to new security mechanisms is still underway and faces many challenges, including identifying which applications are under threat and implementing agile, scalable migration processes. In this work, we survey the state of the art in quantum-safe cryptographic mechanisms, existing applications targeting migration, and open challenges. We examine the building blocks commonly used to integrate quantum-safe mechanisms into existing applications and categorize them by the security mechanisms they employ. Next, we systematically review existing migrations into quantum-safe schemes and categorize them by application domain, including Telecommunications, the Internet of Things, and Blockchains. Finally, we summarize the challenges that must be addressed to enable a successful migration to quantum-resistant mechanisms, as well as the motivations for pursuing this migration.
The emergence of quantum computing presents both significant opportunities and critical challenges for modern cybersecurity. While quantum systems promise advances in science, engineering, and artificial intelligence, they also pose a substantial threat to classical cryptographic techniques such as RSA, ECC, and other widely deployed public-key mechanisms. Quantum algorithms including Shor’s and Grover’s are expected to compromise these systems, placing sensitive data, financial infrastructures, and national security at risk. This paper examines the growing field of quantum-resistant, or post-quantum, cryptography with a focus on identifying constructions capable of withstanding quantum attacks. It provides a systematic overview of major post-quantum cryptographic families, including lattice-based, hash-based, code-based, multivariate, and isogeny-related schemes, and evaluates their current security assumptions, practical efficiency, and readiness for real-world deployment. Beyond technical considerations, the paper highlights the organizational and workforce implications of transitioning to quantum-safe systems, emphasizing the need for coordinated global standards and sustained cybersecurity training. This study underscores that building a quantum-secure digital future requires not only adopting resilient algorithms but also strengthening collaborative, adaptive, and proactive security practices.
The threats are existential to the traditional cryptosystems of public keys, including RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), due to the rapid progress in quantum computing. Such algorithms as the Shor and Grover algorithms prove that as soon as large scale quantum computers are achieved, these classical cryptographic protocols will not provide any privacy and integrity to online communication. This has created an emergency to find post-quantum cryptography (PQC), or quantum-safe cryptography, which will resist attacks by both classical and quantum attackers. The paper is a review of the latest research and development in post-quantum cryptographic algorithms and their implementation in current security systems. We organize quantum-safe methods into significant organizations such as lattice-based, hash-based, multivariate polynomial-based and code-based encrypted communications. Each type has been evaluated critically based on computational efficiency, key sizes, speed of encryption/decryption and security proofs. The survey also examines the current standardization activities happening in the world and especially the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) PQC competition, which lists candidate algorithms that have advanced to standard adoption. Besides this, the paper addresses hybrid cryptographic designs that use both classical and post-quantum bases in ensuring a seamless migration in the transition phase. Internet security protocols like TLS, VPNs and blockchain consensus as applications of PQC are examined in detail. Lastly, we pinpoint open research issues, which include creating lightweight PQC to support resource-constrained IoT devices, balancing performance and strong security assurances, and interoperability between the new PQC algorithms and existing infrastructures. Through detailed survey we inform the future of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers on the preparation of the post-quantum era of secure digital communications.
Cryptography, the practice of concealing messages for private exchange, has evolved significantly to address the challenges posed by new communication methods. In today`s digital world, cryptography has become the cornerstone of cybersecurity, using advanced mathematics like number theory and computational complexity to protect digital information through algorithms. The upcoming arrival of quantum computers poses a serious threat to traditional cryptographic methods, especially those based on asymmetric key cryptography. Quantum Safe Cryptography (QSC) represents the next step in information security, designed to develop cryptographic systems that can withstand attacks from both quantum and classical computers. As quantum computing moves from theory to reality, it`s becoming clear that current cryptographic methods based on integer factorization and discrete logarithm problems are vulnerable to quantum algorithms like Shor`s algorithm. This study highlights the security risks that quantum computing poses to existing encryption methods and proposes a comprehensive approach to quantum-safe cryptography. The transition to quantum-resistant algorithms involves replacing vulnerable cryptographic systems with alternatives that can resist quantum computational attacks. Current analysis shows that while asymmetric key cryptography faces immediate vulnerability, symmetric key algorithms and hash functions remain relatively secure in the near term with appropriate adjustments. Quantum cryptography, which directly uses quantum mechanical principles, offers highly secure encryption mechanisms, notably Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). This research aims to enhance the security of digital infrastructure against quantum threats by evaluating hybrid cryptographic implementations that combine classical and quantum-resistant approaches for optimal security.
The rapid advancement of quantum computing presents both unprecedented opportunities and significant threats to modern cybersecurity. As quantum processors progress toward practical large-scale deployment, widely used cryptographic systems, particularly RSA, ECC, and other public-key mechanisms, face the risk of becoming obsolete. This review examines how quantum technologies can be strategically leveraged to enhance cybersecurity while simultaneously addressing the vulnerabilities introduced by quantum-enabled attacks. A systematic analysis of 35-40 peer-reviewed studies was conducted to evaluate developments in post-quantum cryptography, quantum-resistant security protocols, Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), and hybrid classical–quantum defense architectures. The findings reveal a rapidly evolving research landscape focused on resilient lattice-based cryptography, scalable quantum-safe communication frameworks, and early-stage quantum machine learning applications for intrusion detection. The review highlights both the promise and current limitations of quantum-driven security solutions, including hardware constraints, integration challenges, and the need for global standardization. The study underscores the urgency for governments, industries, and researchers to adopt quantum-ready cybersecurity strategies and accelerate the transition to quantum-resilient infrastructures.
Quantum computing has emerged as a transformative computing paradigm capable of solving problems that remain computationally infeasible for classical systems; however, its rapid advancement also introduces significant security, privacy, and reliability concerns. In this context, this survey presents a comprehensive review of security challenges and mitigation strategies associated with quantum computing, focusing on security issues in quantum computers, security threats caused by quantum computers, and security mechanisms developed for quantum systems. The paper examines vulnerabilities in quantum hardware and software, the impact of quantum computing on existing cryptographic infrastructures and cybersecurity mechanisms, and the development of quantum-resilient solutions such as post-quantum cryptography, quantum-safe communication protocols, quantum intrusion detection systems, and quantum-aware software engineering techniques. In addition, the survey discusses emerging applications of quantum technologies in cybersecurity domains, including malware detection, network intrusion detection, Internet of Things (IoT) security, and secure communication systems. Furthermore, the paper analyzes existing quantum error mitigation and fault-tolerance approaches designed to improve the robustness and trustworthiness of quantum computation under realistic noisy conditions. By consolidating recent advances, open research challenges, and future directions, this survey provides a structured overview of the evolving intersection between quantum computing and cybersecurity, while serving as a reference for researchers and practitioners working toward secure, resilient, and quantum-ready computing infrastructures.
Quantum computing poses an immense threat to classical digital infrastructure security, as existing encryption schemes are vulnerable to Shor’s and Grover’s algorithms. The accelerating quantum computing timeline makes this risk particularly imminent. Harvest-now-decrypt-later threats elevate the security risks further. While enterprises will eventually adopt the recently standardized post-quantum cryptograph (PQC) schemes as a way to defend against these attacks, many challenges remain to be addressed. To begin with, crypto observability in large enterprises is a challenging task, given the wide variety of hardware, applications, and software deployed with cryptography artefacts used across the depth and breadth of the infrastructure. We also cannot fully rely solely on PQC schemes to make an infrastructure quantum-safe, since just because they have not been broken yet does not mean they can never be broken in the future. Therefore, we need crypto resiliency, where we need to augment the use of PQC with other quantum-resistant network protocols. Finally, we need crypto agility as a foundational paradigm to deal with the constant new threats to ensure fast response and remediation to emerging threats. Enterprises need to consider all three approaches in a holistic manner in order to achieve a practical path towards quantum resistance.