The rapid expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) applications in sectors like smart cities, healthcare, and industrial automation has introduced serious security challenges due to limited device resources and growing threats from quantum computing. Traditional cryptographic techniques such as RSA and AES are increasingly inadequate, particularly against quantum attacks, and face limitations in scalability and efficiency in multi-node environments. To overcome these challenges, this paper proposes a lightweight and quantum-resilient security framework for IoT networks based on Multi-Node Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) integrated with Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), termed MNQ-ECC. The proposed architecture enables secure key generation and exchange across multiple nodes and includes four security phases: pre-deployment, registration, login, and authentication. Here, performance evaluation is carried out using Qiskit simulators under varying network conditions and key performance metrics such as key generation rate, entropy, latency, and communication overhead are analysed. The results demonstrate that MNQ-ECC achieves 99.5% resistance to quantum attacks, improves key generation efficiency by 30%, and reduces encryption overhead by 20% compared to standard ECC. These findings confirm the framework's effectiveness in securing IoT networks with high scalability, low latency, and strong resilience against classical and quantum threats.
The rapid expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) applications in sectors like smart cities, healthcare, and industrial automation has introduced serious security challenges due to limited device resources and growing threats from quantum computing. Traditional cryptographic techniques such as RSA and AES are increasingly inadequate, particularly against quantum attacks, and face limitations in scalability and efficiency in multi-node environments. To overcome these challenges, this paper proposes a lightweight and quantum-resilient security framework for IoT networks based on Multi-Node Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) integrated with Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), termed MNQ-ECC. The proposed architecture enables secure key generation and exchange across multiple nodes and includes four security phases: pre-deployment, registration, login, and authentication. Here, performance evaluation is carried out using Qiskit simulators under varying network conditions and key performance metrics such as key generation rate, entropy, latency, and communication overhead are analysed. The results demonstrate that MNQ-ECC achieves 99.5% resistance to quantum attacks, improves key generation efficiency by 30%, and reduces encryption overhead by 20% compared to standard ECC. These findings confirm the framework's effectiveness in securing IoT networks with high scalability, low latency, and strong resilience against classical and quantum threats.
The resource limitations of IoT nodes and the vulnerability of wireless channels to cyberattacks and snooping, the quick spread of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in wireless surroundings has created serious challenges to data security and privacy. The development of quantum computing, which can meritoriously crack classical encryption, is posing a growing threat to recognized cryptographic techniques like RSA and ECC. By applying concepts from quantum mechanics like predicament cloning, quantum cryptography, in particular Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), provides tentatively unbreakable security. In order to integrate lightweight quantum key exchange with traditional IoT communication protocols, this paper proposes a comprehensive Quantum Cryptography Framework (QCF) exactly designed for Wireless IoT networks. The framework is made to preserve energy efficiency while certifying forward secrecy, confidentiality, integrity, and authentication. A performance evaluation in terms of latency, throughput, and resistance to quantum attacks supports our discussion of the architecture, working mechanism, and implementation deliberations. The findings show that, when compared to traditional encryption methods, the suggested QCF greatly improves the security of wireless IoT systems, certifying resilience against oppositional models of the future.
The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has connected billions of smart devices across healthcare, transportation, industrial automation, and smart home environments. While IoT has enhanced automation and data-driven decision-making, its widespread deployment has also increased the risk of cyberattacks. Conventional public-key cryptographic algorithms such as RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) are vulnerable to future quantum computing attacks, particularly those based on Shor's algorithm. This paper proposes a Quantum-Resistant Cryptographic Framework (QRCF) for secure IoT communication using lattice-based cryptography integrated with lightweight authentication and efficient key management. The framework is designed to meet the computational limitations of IoT devices while ensuring long-term confidentiality and integrity. Performance evaluation demonstrates improvements in security resilience, authentication efficiency, and communication reliability compared with traditional cryptographic approaches. The proposed framework offers a scalable and future-ready solution for protecting IoT ecosystems in the post-quantum era.
The coupling of quantum-metering methods with cryptographic key exchanges spells out a new security paradigm model to safeguard Internet of Things (IoT) networks against rapidly changing cyberspace threats. The given assessment explains a quantum-advanced scenario that is operationally feasible and serves as a platform for quantum key distribution (QKD) along with classical post-quantum algorithms to deliver end-to-end confidentiality, integrity, and authentication features to a wide range of IoT devices. The model, by the virtue of quantum entanglement and photon polarization used in the creation of tamper-evident communication links, is invulnerable to adversarial-aided eavesdropping and computational assault methods and further offers a hybrid encryption protocol that has been demonstrated to alleviate key generation and exchange latency trade-offs - simultaneously maintaining scalability and effectiveness in resource-constrained IoT node environments. The key compromise probability is significantly lowered in the experimental results, along with the keys' entropy levels, which were generated in the pure QKD space as opposed to classicalbased RSA and ECC methods. Also, the framework investigates lightweight quantum-safe authentication techniques that can be used to establish trust at the device level. The output points to the enhanced resistance to quantum and classical attackers that can make the solutions work in real-time application IoT environments such as smart healthcare, autonomous systems, and industrial automation. Overall, the quantum-enriched model of cryptographic key exchange is next-gen IoT ecosystem to be implemented subsequently.
The evolution of smart cities will contribute to an increase in the use of interconnected physical/digital ecosystems, and consequently, an increase in threat surface for the cyber threats against the protected data streams. With the emergence of quantum-based cyberthreats, this has increased the potential range of types of cyber-attacks on protected data and increased the use of quantum-based means of conducting cyber-attacks on protected data. This research proposal presents an Internet of Things (IoT) smart city framework founded on quantum-secure standards that were developed for next-generation IoT smart cities. The IoT Smart City Framework is comprised of four levels of architecture: a Quantum Backbone, a Key Management Level, an Edge Gateway Level, and an IoT Device Layer. Consequently, through the use of this architecture, the IoT Smart City Framework can protect the IoT Smart City Network from future cybercriminal attacks while providing assurance that the IoT Smart City Framework has been 'future-proofed.' By utilizing strategically deployed quantum nodes, the proposed solution performs QKD and frees devices with limited resources from needing to perform highly computationally intensive cryptography in order to secure encrypted communications, instead employing Lightweight Encryption Standards in conjunction with Symmetric Keys established via QKD. Using simulated quantum channels and urban IoT workloads, our experimental results yield secret key rates between 12 and 18 kilobits/sec (kbps) with a low quantum bit error rate (QBER) of 1.8% to 3.2%. Based on these experimental results, we conclude that the proposed hierarchical security architecture provides a resilient security framework for urban essential services, with negligible energy consumption.
The rapid expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems has introduced significant security challenges due to resource-constrained devices, heterogeneous network architectures, and largescale connectivity. Traditional authentication and key exchange mechanisms, primarily based on classical cryptographic algorithms such as RSA and ECC, are vulnerable to future quantum computing attacks. The emergence of quantum algorithms, particularly Shor’s algorithm, threatens the long-term confidentiality and integrity of IoT communications. This paper proposes a Quantum-Resistant Authentication and Key Exchange Protocol specifically designed for secure IoT architectures. The proposed framework integrates post-quantum cryptographic primitives, including lattice-based key exchange mechanisms and hash-based authentication schemes, optimized for low computational overhead suitable for constrained IoT devices. The protocol ensures mutual authentication, forward secrecy, and resistance against quantum adversaries while maintaining minimal communication latency. Security analysis demonstrates robustness against replay, man-in-the-middle, and key-compromise attacks. Performance evaluation shows that the proposed solution achieves a balance between quantum security strength and resource efficiency, making it suitable for next-generation IoT deployments in smart cities, healthcare systems, and industrial automation.
The rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) has introduced unprecedented cybersecurity challenges, as traditional cryptographic methods struggle to provide both efficiency and quantum resistance in resource-constrained environments. This research introduces Adaptive Quantum Cryptography (AQC), a novel security framework that integrates Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), Quantum Random Number Generators (QRNGs), and AI-driven dynamic adaptation to safeguard IoT networks against evolving cyber threats. Unlike classical encryption techniques such as RSA and ECC, which are vulnerable to quantum attacks, AQC leverages quantum mechanical principles—such as superposition, entanglement, and the no-cloning theorem—to ensure provably secure key exchange and data encryption. The proposed AQC system dynamically adjusts cryptographic protocols based on real-time network conditions, computational resources, and threat intelligence, optimizing security without imposing excessive overhead. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that AQC achieves a 70% improvement in key exchange efficiency, a 50% reduction in computational load, and a 95% resilience rate against quantum attacks compared to conventional encryption methods. Additionally, the integration of QRNGs enhances cryptographic key entropy, while AI-driven anomaly detection enables proactive threat mitigation. This framework is particularly suited for next-generation IoT applications, including smart grids, autonomous vehicles, and industrial automation, where security, scalability, and energy efficiency are critical. By combining quantum-resistant algorithms with adaptive security mechanisms, AQC provides forward secrecy, resistance to quantum adversaries, and robust authentication, ensuring long-term protection for IoT ecosystems in the post-quantum era. The findings underscore AQC’s potential as a foundational security architecture for future quantum-safe IoT networks.