Traditional encryption techniques face serious threats from the rapid development of quantum computing, which could soon compromise many classical algorithms. To address this, new quantum-resistant security methods are needed to protect private data and communications. This paper proposes a hybrid encryption approach that integrates quantum key distribution (QKD) with a simplified 3×3 advanced encryption standard (AES) key matrix, creating a lightweight system. The objective is to provide an efficient encryption method suitable for devices with limited processing power, such as IoT devices. The model was simulated using Qiskit, achieving an average quantum bit error rate of 0.00%, protocol efficiency of 49.72 %, and quantum fidelity of 1.000 under certain conditions. During eavesdropping scenarios, the error rate increased to 16.90 %. The simplified AES achieved a 50.14 % avalanche effect and an encryption time of 0.3073 ms, reducing latency by 17 % compared to standard AES. These results suggest that combining QKD with lightweight AES can provide quantum resilience and computational efficiency, offering a practical solution for secure communication in the post-quantum era.
Traditional encryption techniques face serious threats from the rapid development of quantum computing, which could soon compromise many classical algorithms. To address this, new quantum-resistant security methods are needed to protect private data and communications. This paper proposes a hybrid encryption approach that integrates quantum key distribution (QKD) with a simplified 3×3 advanced encryption standard (AES) key matrix, creating a lightweight system. The objective is to provide an efficient encryption method suitable for devices with limited processing power, such as IoT devices. The model was simulated using Qiskit, achieving an average quantum bit error rate of 0.00%, protocol efficiency of 49.72 %, and quantum fidelity of 1.000 under certain conditions. During eavesdropping scenarios, the error rate increased to 16.90 %. The simplified AES achieved a 50.14 % avalanche effect and an encryption time of 0.3073 ms, reducing latency by 17 % compared to standard AES. These results suggest that combining QKD with lightweight AES can provide quantum resilience and computational efficiency, offering a practical solution for secure communication in the post-quantum era.
This study provides an integrated quantum classical and traditional cryptographic framework that combines the Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution to RSA and AES for achieving highly enhanced secure communication. Upgrading the previous work, involving a BB84 with RSA and AES hybrid scheme. Similarly, this paper advances the security by incorporating DI-QKD in which it rejects assumptions about the internal functioning of the quantum devices and protects against the side channel attacks. In this proposed model, DI-QKD helps to create or generate provably secure shared keys, based on Bell-inequality violations whereas RSA ensures reliability in authentication and public key exchange. AES provides high-speed symmetric encryption for the mass data protection. This paper therefore establishes the complete DI-QKD with RSA and AES workflow simulating secure key generation; producing encrypted message outputs and the performance metrics such as key generation rate; quantum bit error rate; encryption time and overall system throughput is measured. These graphical results are compared with the earlier BB84 hybrid model to evaluate operational efficiency, resistance to adversarial interference and security robustness and too highlights the quantitative improvement offered by DI-QKD especially in antagonistic or untrusted device scenarios. Hence this paper demonstrates that the DI-QKD with RSA, AES hybrid system offering strengthened quantum safe security with classical compatibility, positioning it as a propitious architecture for the futuristic cryptographic networks.
The emergence of quantum computing poses a significant threat to classical cryptographic systems, particularly those relying on mathematical hardness assumptions for key exchange. While symmetric algorithms such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) remain efficient and widely deployed, their long-term security ultimately depends on the secrecy of keys. In this paper, we present a hybrid framework that integrates quantum key distribution (QKD) with AES and DES to enhance key security without altering cipher internals. Using the BB84 protocol as the quantum key generator, we implement a simulation-based system in Qiskit and evaluate it against classical pseudo-random key generation.Our methodology covers five phases: establishing AES/DES baselines, generating quantum random keys, implementing BB84 with basis reconciliation and error detection, integrating quantum keys with AES/DES, and benchmarking across varying key sizes and file sizes. Results demonstrate that AES encryption throughput remains stable (around 250–370 MB/s) regardless of key source, while QKD introduces measurable latency in key generation (around 40–110 seconds for 128–256 bits). Importantly, adversarial interference is reliably detected, with 97.3% accuracy in eavesdropper identification.The findings confirm that while classical systems excel in speed and scalability, QKD offers unmatched, physics-backed security assurances. Our study highlights the practicality of hybrid quantum-classical encryption, providing a foundation for secure communication in the post-quantum era.
Digital communication development creates an increasing threat to data security because emerging quantum computing technologies easily overcome traditional methods of encryption. A security system that integrates traditional encrypting with quantum computing methods shows promise for enhancing safety of networks mechanisms. The Hybrid Quantum Classical–Advanced Encryption System (HQC–AES) integrates the safe symmetrical functionality of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) procedures, specifically BB84 and E91, to ensure quantum resiliency. A secure key exchange together with real-time eavesdropper detection becomes possible through this combined approach, which maintains data confidentiality at a high level. A synthesis of post-quantum cryptography methods, such as Kyber and Falcon, safeguards traditional ways of communicating alongside quantum structures that lack comparability. The HQC–AES model provides solutions to three key cryptographic problems including secure key handling and distribution as well as encrypted transmission and long-term protection. Quantum mechanics enables protection enhancement for both conventional and quantum-based attacks by integrating it with advanced classical encryption methods. Theoretically, simulators and models show that the hybrid model maintains the technical agility of networks via several networked connections while simultaneously securing the reliability of data. The architecture delivers scalable security features to protect high-security cloud applications and financial systems and Internet of Things (IoT) resources by ensuring paramount secure communication capabilities. In safeguarding the transfer of data across several network circumstances, the suggested HQC–AES approach attained an overall accuracy of 98.7%. The fact that it is resistant to both conventional and quantum-based assaults and manages to keep data secure and intact is reflected in its excellent accuracy.
Quantum computing is posing a serious risk to classical cryptographic tools such as RSA and ECC as sophisticated quantum algorithms are able to crack their mathematical foundation in a time bound that is a a polynomial in the number of repetitions. In this paper, we will describe the process of integrating Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) into a hybrid approach to secure communications in the post-quantum world. The suggested methodology is a combination of the computational efficiency and scalability of PQC and the information-theoretic security and eavesdropping detection abilities of QKD. Simulation observations indicate that PQC-only systems are both faster in generating keys and scalable, but do not have a strong eavesdropping detection. On the other hand, non-conditional security is only a feature of systems based on QKD, but it is also highly overhead and slows down key rate. The hybrid PQC-Q KD model provides a balanced performance, high resilience, high authentication, high confidentiality, and realistic deployability. On balance, this discussion demonstrates that the hybrid approach is better than standalone methods and can provide a strong solution to protect against new quantum threats. The large-scale network protocol can be optimized, resources and further integration with other emerging technologies, such as 5G/6G, IoT or cloud computing, can be directed in future research.
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.
With the current increase in the rate of quantum computing, traditional cryptographic algorithms face a significant risk of compromise, as they are based on mathematical problems that quantum algorithms can efficiently solve. One solution to this challenge has come up in the form of post-quantum cryptography (PQC). By having a hybrid encrypted solution that combines the two different encryption algorithms, NTRU quantum-resistant and fast AES symmetric-key, with a well-integrated combination presented in this paper, we aim to usher in secure and safe data in the post-quantum era. This mixed regime is the most advanced approach that combines classical and quantum encryption. We compare the performance of the system with that of standalone AES, NTRU, and RSA-based systems, examining aspects such as encryption, decryption, key generation, and key size. Benchmarks indicate that the hybrid system has an overhead, but its performance is passable; encryption times are 60ms and 14000ms for 1 KB and 5000 KB of data, respectively, compared to 12ms for 1 KB and 50ms for 5000 KB by AES and NTRU. The same can be said about decryption, with the hybrid system being more efficient than NTRU but still slower than AES. The NTRU key generation times were depicted as unfavorable compared to those of AES, and this margin was seen to increase as the key sizes of NTRU were varied. Compared to executing the same algorithm on a classical computer, the hybrid system is relatively computationally expensive but offers strong quantum resistance. A hybrid encryption system based on the AES-NTRU is a solution to the quantum computing threat to data security. Later projects will be based around various efforts to optimize the NTRU system, also including hardware acceleration opportunities and an increase in the system utilization in real-life environments.