Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) are vital for securing modern networks, but traditional machine learning-based anomaly detection methods often struggle with high-dimensional and imbalanced data. Although classical GANs help improve data generation, they are computationally intensive and limited in scalability. Quantum GANs (QGANs) present a promising alternative, but existing approaches are tested only in simulations. Instead, using real devices presents challenges not only because of the impact of quantum noise but, more significantly, due to usage restrictions imposed by their high cost. To cope with this, we propose a lightweight but effective hybrid QGAN for network intrusion detection, adopting a hybrid training approach by switching between an IBM real quantum device and its noisy simulator version, balancing computational feasibility and relevance in the real world. The results show that our model performs consistently, with minimal performance loss on real hardware.
Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) are vital for securing modern networks, but traditional machine learning-based anomaly detection methods often struggle with high-dimensional and imbalanced data. Although classical GANs help improve data generation, they are computationally intensive and limited in scalability. Quantum GANs (QGANs) present a promising alternative, but existing approaches are tested only in simulations. Instead, using real devices presents challenges not only because of the impact of quantum noise but, more significantly, due to usage restrictions imposed by their high cost. To cope with this, we propose a lightweight but effective hybrid QGAN for network intrusion detection, adopting a hybrid training approach by switching between an IBM real quantum device and its noisy simulator version, balancing computational feasibility and relevance in the real world. The results show that our model performs consistently, with minimal performance loss on real hardware.
In increasingly complex digital environments, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) are essential for maintaining network security. Traditional machine learning techniques face challenges, including difficulties with high-dimensional data and performance issues when dealing with unbalanced datasets. Although Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) provide an acceptable alternative by improving data creation, their traditional implementations are computationally demanding and have limitations when it comes to examining intricate data distributions. Quantum GANs (QGANs) use the benefits of quantum computing to solve these problems. Therefore, a distributed approach improves load balancing and mitigate the impact of quantum noise for NISQ devices. The proposed model efficiently learns the distribution of benign data by employing a federated hybrid QGAN architecture that combines a quantum generators with a classical discriminators. This allows the model to produce samples that closely mimic patterns found in real data. The generator in the proposed QGAN is a variational quantum circuit (VQC), and the discriminator is a neural network. Tested on the NSL-KDD dataset, the federated QGAN offers a promising option for next-generation IDS.
Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) are a cornerstone of modern cybersecurity; however, their performance is increasingly constrained by high-dimensional network traffic and the scalability limitations of classical machine learning approaches. Quantum Machine Learning (QML) has recently emerged as a promising paradigm by leveraging quantum feature spaces and hybrid quantum–classical optimization. In this work, we present a unified and reproducible benchmarking framework for QML-based intrusion detection under realistic Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) constraints. The proposed framework integrates hybrid Quantum Neural Networks (QNNs) and Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVMs) within a consistent experimental pipeline, enabling a systematic comparison of quantum models, embedding strategies, and dimensionality reduction techniques. Experiments are conducted on the NSL-KDD benchmark dataset for both binary (normal versus attack) and multiclass intrusion detection tasks. Multiple quantum embedding strategies, including angle, amplitude, and Instantaneous Quantum Polynomial (IQP) embeddings, are evaluated in conjunction with PCA-based dimensionality reduction to analyze trade-offs between expressivity, circuit complexity, and computational cost. The proposed models are benchmarked against strong classical baselines under identical preprocessing and evaluation conditions. The results demonstrate that QNN- and QSVM-based IDS models achieve competitive and, in several scenarios, superior performance compared to classical approaches, particularly in multiclass settings characterized by nonlinear and imbalanced data distributions. In addition, we provide an in-depth analysis of scalability limitations, training complexity, and NISQ feasibility, highlighting practical considerations for real-world deployment. To ensure full reproducibility, all implementation details, datasets, and experimental configurations are publicly available at: https://github.com/raidanis/QML-IDS-NSLKDD. These findings position hybrid QML as a promising complementary paradigm for next-generation intrusion detection systems, particularly in low-dimensional and high-complexity feature spaces.
Quantum Machine Learning (QML) has become a promising alternative in the field of network anomaly detection (NAD) in recent years, especially in intrusion detection. in the development of intrusion detection systems (IDS). The aim of this study is to examine in detail four quantum machine learning models that were run not on simulators but on real quantum computers, including IBM QPU and IonQ Aria-1 platforms. The analyzed research uses different architectures, such as Quantum Convolutional Neural Network (QCNN), Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC), Quantum Autoencoder (QAE) and Quantum Neural Network (QNN), combined with multiple data processing methods and encoding techniques.
This survey examines quantum-enhanced machine learning techniques for intrusion detection in Internet of Things (IoT) and fog environments, synthesizing recent work on hybrid quantum-classical models, quantum convolutional neural networks (QCNNs), quantum support vector machines (QSVMs), and quantum-assisted clustering.We review five recent primary studies that apply quantum methods to IoT security, summarize their methodological choices (encoding, circuit ansatz, classical-quantum interfaces), and evaluate reported benefits and limitations with respect to accuracy, computational cost, and deployability in resource-constrained settings.The literature indicates potential gains in feature expressivity and false-negative reduction from quantum encodings and variational circuits, but practical barriers remain: limited qubit counts, noisy hardware, encoding overhead, and scarce real-world deployment studies.We identify concrete research gaps and propose directions for lightweight encodings, noise-aware hybrid architectures, federated quantum-assisted Intrusion Detection System (IDS), and standardized benchmarks for reproducible evaluation.The survey aims to guide researchers and practitioners toward scalable, explainable, and deployable quantum-enhanced intrusion detection for IoT.
The development of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) revolutionized the creation of synthetic data and signified the start of a revolutionary age in artificial intelligence. GANs have been used over the years in a variety of domains, including video production, natural language processing, and image synthesis. However, issues with classical GANs include computational efficiency, limited scalability for high-dimensional data and significant processing costs. Quantum GANs (QGANs) have been developed to overcome these drawbacks by integrating adversarial training with the concepts of quantum computing. In order to improve efficiency and stability, QGANs make use of quantum superposition and entanglement. This makes them an effective choice for producing high-quality synthetic data. By using noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) devices for effective, noise-tolerant computations, quantum GANs (QGANs) allow for high-dimensional data synthesis using fewer resources than traditional techniques. Among their many uses, QGANs are particularly good at picture synthesis, making use of quantum circuits to produce realistic images quickly. This research studies the architecture of QGANs, particularly quantum circuit designs, implementation strategies for QGANs, and a comparison of several performance metrics.
Abstract Quantum generative adversarial networks (QGANs) have demonstrated strong capabilities in tasks like synthetic data generation and detecting anomalies. Recent developments have increasingly integrated traditional machine learning techniques to boost the performance of QGANs. Motivated by this progress, we propose an innovative QGAN architecture that incorporates a classical learning component and employs a dual-generator design. Our approach improves upon the traditional hybrid quantum–classical GAN structure and introduces a redesigned loss function tailored for the new model. Experiments on multiple datasets indicate that our method surpasses previous techniques in image generation quality, achieving a 1.38% average reduction in Fréchet inception distance scores compared to the current state-of-the-art, and improvements of 6.52%, 0.36%, and 0.38% in structural similarity index, cosine similarity, and peak signal-to-noise ratio metrics, respectively. Additionally, our architecture supports the generation of larger images (up to 78 × 78 ), as verified on the CelebA dataset. Simulations conducted in noisy conditions further confirm the robustness and effectiveness of both the proposed architecture and loss function.