The deployment of IoT for smart cities surveillance includes smart grids, smart lighting, air and water quality control, noise level detection, and the detection of natural disasters. Sensors and cameras are utilized for detecting suspicious activity, identifying road hazards, and monitoring traffic patterns. This widespread adoption of IoT for smart city monitoring enhances the urban lives of citizens from the perspectives of cleanliness, temperature, smart governance, and real-time information broadcasting. However, information transmission among these is a leading application that takes place through a hostile and low-latency networking technology, making them vulnerable to numerous cyber-attacks. However, if a robust and error-free security mechanism is implemented, then surveillance of the critical domain can be efficiently handled. Moreover, conventional security schemes are currently not workable and are vulnerable to different vulnerabilities. Therefore, this article presents an advanced security framework using the quantum key derivation (QKD) technique for secure smart city monitoring, because the QKD approach, based on the principles of quantum physics, is immune to all known cyber threats. The correctness of the proposed QKD protocol has been verified using the widely accepted random oracle model (ROM), and its performance features have been evaluated by considering computation and communication costs, as well as energy consumption. The results obtained demonstrated that the proposed protocol is lightweight, robust, correct, and feasible for real-world implementation in smart city monitoring.
The deployment of IoT for smart cities surveillance includes smart grids, smart lighting, air and water quality control, noise level detection, and the detection of natural disasters. Sensors and cameras are utilized for detecting suspicious activity, identifying road hazards, and monitoring traffic patterns. This widespread adoption of IoT for smart city monitoring enhances the urban lives of citizens from the perspectives of cleanliness, temperature, smart governance, and real-time information broadcasting. However, information transmission among these is a leading application that takes place through a hostile and low-latency networking technology, making them vulnerable to numerous cyber-attacks. However, if a robust and error-free security mechanism is implemented, then surveillance of the critical domain can be efficiently handled. Moreover, conventional security schemes are currently not workable and are vulnerable to different vulnerabilities. Therefore, this article presents an advanced security framework using the quantum key derivation (QKD) technique for secure smart city monitoring, because the QKD approach, based on the principles of quantum physics, is immune to all known cyber threats. The correctness of the proposed QKD protocol has been verified using the widely accepted random oracle model (ROM), and its performance features have been evaluated by considering computation and communication costs, as well as energy consumption. The results obtained demonstrated that the proposed protocol is lightweight, robust, correct, and feasible for real-world implementation in smart city monitoring.
Currently and in the near future, Smart Cities are vital to enhance urban living, address resource challenges, optimize infrastructure, and harness technology for sustainability, efficiency, and improved quality of life in rapidly urbanizing environments. Owing to the high usage of networks, sensors, and connected devices, Smart Cities generate a massive amount of data. Therefore, Smart City security concerns encompass data privacy, IoT vulnerabilities, cyber threats, and urban infrastructure risks, requiring robust solutions to safeguard digital assets, citizens, and critical services. Some solutions include robust cybersecurity measures, data encryption, AI-driven threat detection, public-private partnerships, standardized security protocols, and community engagement to foster a resilient and secure smart city ecosystem. For example, Security Information and Event Management helps in real-time monitoring, threat detection, and incident response by aggregating and analyzing security data. In this paper, we propose a Hybrid Quantum Architecture for bolstering Smart City security that exploits Quantum Machine Learning and SIEM to provide security based on Quantum Artificial Intelligence and patterns/rules. The validity of the architecture was proven by conducting experiments and a comparison of the QML algorithms with a state-of-the-art AI algorithms. We also provide a proof of concept dashboard for the proposed architecture.
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.
In increasingly urbanizing surroundings, smart cities (SCs) are essential for improving urban living, addressing resource constraints, optimizing infrastructure, and utilizing technology for efficiency, sustainability, and a higher standard of living. Because quantum cryptography (QC) may offer appropriate performance for security for various applications, it is gaining importance in both the scientific and business areas. SCs produce a huge deal of data because of the extensive use of networks, sensors, and linked devices. Thus, SC security issues include cyber threats, data security, Internet of Smart City Things (IoSCT) vulnerabilities, and urban infrastructure dangers, necessitating strong solutions to protect residents, digital assets, and vital services. Some options include cybersecurity measures, data signatures, threat detection strategies, and standardized security procedures to promote a robust and safe SC ecosystem. Unfortunately, existing systems are still vulnerable to security threats, mainly due to the lack of fast and effective security techniques. In order to combat these security loopholes, this research work proposes a SC security system (PSCSS), grounded in QC, FALCON signatures (FS, QKD) technology, RF and QBoost. Use of QC helps in effective precautions to be maintained for security. In addition, because FS does provide reliable safety to protect the data received through the SC nodes from tampering. In this paradigm, QKD underpins the PSCSS, offering public and private keys to all SC nodes reliably and securely. To sum up, the fusion of RF and QBoost is beneficial when it comes to identifying suspicious data in PSCSS. The viability of the proposed system is illustrated through theoretical performance, security analysis and comparison of the SC system with state-of-theart security algorithms. The theoretical results show that our system achieves a better trade-off between performance and security than existing systems.
The IoT-enabled Smart Grid uses IoT smart devices to collect the private electricity data of consumers and send it to service providers over the public network, which leads to some new security problems. To ensure the communication security in a smart grid, many researches are focusing on using authentication and key agreement protocols to protect against cyber attacks. Unfortunately, most of them are vulnerable to various attacks. In this paper, we analyze the security of an existent protocol by introducing an insider attacker, and show that their scheme cannot guarantee the claimed security requirements under their adversary model. Then, we present an improved lightweight authentication and key agreement protocol, which aims to enhance the security of IoT-enabled smart grid systems. Furthermore, we proved the security of the scheme under the real-or-random oracle model. The result shown that the improved scheme is secure in the presence of both internal attackers and external attackers. Compared with the original protocol, the new protocol is more secure, while keeping the same computation efficiency. Both of them are 0.0552 ms. The communication of the new protocol is 236 bytes, which is acceptable in smart grids. In other words, with similar communication and computation cost, we proposed a more secure protocol for smart grids.
Smart cities necessitate ultra-secure and scalable communication frameworks to manage billions of interconnected IoT devices, particularly in the face of the emerging quantum computing threats. This paper proposes the QESIF, a novel Quantum-Enhanced Secure IoT Framework that integrates Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) with classical IoT infrastructures via a hybrid protocol stack and a quantum-aware intrusion detection system (Q-IDS). The QESIF achieves high resilience against eavesdropping by monitoring quantum bit error rate (QBER) and leveraging entropy-weighted key generation. The simulation results, conducted using datasets TON IoT, Edge-IIoTset, and Bot-IoT, demonstrate the effectiveness of the QESIF. The framework records an average QBER of 0.0103 under clean channels and discards over 95% of the compromised keys in adversarial settings. It achieves Attack Detection Rates (ADRs) of 98.1%, 98.7%, and 98.3% across the three datasets, outperforming the baselines by 4–9%. Moreover, the QESIF delivers the lowest average latency of 20.3 ms and the highest throughput of 868 kbit/s in clean scenarios while maintaining energy efficiency with 13.4 mJ per session.
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.