Utilizing a Cryptographic Metric Taxonomy on Post-Quantum Kem Algorithms

Manjiri Harmalkar, Kurunandan Jain, Prabhakar Krishnan

Classical public-key cryptographic algorithms like the RSA algorithm and Diffie-Hellman are used to secure internet communications. However, the emergence of quantum computers poses a significant threat to these established algorithms, potentially leading to security breaches and malicious attacks. If quantum computers can break these algorithms, the entire security infrastructure of the internet could be compromised. Post- quantum cryptography (PQC) is a cryptographic area dedicated to developing new encryption and key exchange mechanisms that can resist quantum attacks. Its goal is to create quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms, with NIST playing a central role in standardization and collaboration to ensure information security in the era of quantum computing. This study conducts a survey of Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM) algorithms within the field of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), along with their alternative counterparts. It provides a comprehensive analysis of performance metrics, including key sizes, execution times, and runtime performance, specifically focusing on Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM) algorithms.

Bikram Paul, Gaurav Trivedi

Markus Rautell, Outi-Marja Latvala, Visa Vallivaara +1 more

Measuring the security of cryptographic systems is not a simple task. Nevertheless, there is an increasing need for a cryptographic metric which could assist in decision making when choosing between various candidates. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has launched a process to standardize quantum-resistance public key encryption, key encapsulation and digital signature algorithms. This is NIST’s response to the threat posed by quantum computers against classical public key cryptography. In this paper, we apply a metric taxonomy, produced by earlier studies, to two NIST third round finalist digital signature algorithms Dilithium and Falcon in order to asses the effectiveness and extensiveness of the metric. Although, our results show that clear differences can be found with used metrics, we propose some improvements to them to allow more comprehensive analysis.

Syed Ismail Abdul Lathif, Priya Saxena, Priyanshi Singh

Francisco Javier de la Puente Secades, Gonzalo Esteban, Adrián Campazas +3 more

Jonatan Rassekhnia, Karl Andersson, Ahmed Afif Monrat

The transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) presents significant challenges for modern computing environments due to increased computational overhead, communication latency, and implementation complexity. Existing evaluation methods typically focus on isolated cryptographic performance metrics and do not provide a unified framework for assessing the overall resilience of PQC deployments across heterogeneous systems. This paper introduces the Quantum Encryption Resilience Score (QERS), a novel system-level evaluation framework designed to quantify the resilience of post-quantum cryptographic implementations by integrating computational, network, and operational performance metrics into a single composite score. QERS provides a standardized methodology for comparing PQC algorithms across diverse deployment scenarios. In this study, the framework is experimentally evaluated using a heterogeneous ESP32-based embedded and IoT testbed with gateway-assisted post-quantum cryptographic processing. The proposed framework is validated through experimental implementations of the NIST-standardized ML-KEM key encapsulation mechanism and the ML-DSA digital signature algorithm under multiple communication protocols and heterogeneous hardware configurations. Experimental results demonstrate that QERS effectively distinguishes the trade-offs between security, computational efficiency, resource utilization, and communication performance, providing a practical decision-support framework for selecting appropriate PQC implementations. The proposed framework contributes a reproducible and extensible methodology for the system-level evaluation of post-quantum cryptography and establishes a foundation for future research into standardized resilience and trust assessment of quantum-resistant systems.