The evolution from 5G to 6G wireless networks is driving a fundamental transformation in encryption technologies. While 5G networks primarily rely on advanced classical cryptography, including AES, ECC, and RSA, emerging applications such as IoT, e-healthcare, and ultra-reliable low-latency communications demand lightweight, hybrid, and context-aware security schemes. The advent of quantum computing poses significant threats to classical cryptosystems, motivating the integration of quantum-resistant security techniques, including post-quantum cryptography (PQC), quantum key distribution (QKD), and physical layer security (PLS) in 6G networks. This review synthesizes recent research on classical, hybrid, and quantum-resistant security techniques, highlighting the shift toward multi-layered and adaptive security frameworks. A comparative analysis of PLS in 5G and 6G illustrates its transition from a complementary role to a core security mechanism, especially in ultra-low-latency, massive connectivity, and heterogeneous environments. Finally, open research questions and standardization challenges are discussed, emphasizing the need for scalable, energy-efficient, and interoperable security solutions for next-generation wireless networks.
The evolution from 5G to 6G wireless networks is driving a fundamental transformation in encryption technologies. While 5G networks primarily rely on advanced classical cryptography, including AES, ECC, and RSA, emerging applications such as IoT, e-healthcare, and ultra-reliable low-latency communications demand lightweight, hybrid, and context-aware security schemes. The advent of quantum computing poses significant threats to classical cryptosystems, motivating the integration of quantum-resistant security techniques, including post-quantum cryptography (PQC), quantum key distribution (QKD), and physical layer security (PLS) in 6G networks. This review synthesizes recent research on classical, hybrid, and quantum-resistant security techniques, highlighting the shift toward multi-layered and adaptive security frameworks. A comparative analysis of PLS in 5G and 6G illustrates its transition from a complementary role to a core security mechanism, especially in ultra-low-latency, massive connectivity, and heterogeneous environments. Finally, open research questions and standardization challenges are discussed, emphasizing the need for scalable, energy-efficient, and interoperable security solutions for next-generation wireless networks.
The deployment of 5G and emerging 6G networks introduces significant security challenges for Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems comprising billions of heterogeneous devices, including resource-constrained endpoints, more capable embedded controllers, gateways, edge nodes, and network infrastructure. At the same time, the long-term security of widely deployed public-key cryptography is challenged by advances in quantum computing, motivating migration toward standardized post-quantum key-establishment and digital-signature mechanisms. This comprehensive, evidence-based review classifies cryptographic mechanisms for wireless IoT in 5G and beyond across lightweight symmetric cryptography, post-quantum cryptography, privacy-preserving encryption, and adaptive security. The literature-reported implementation results are compared with explicit attention to heterogeneous hardware, memory, energy, communication, and latency constraints. Lightweight symmetric mechanisms remain relevant for constrained data protection, while standardized post-quantum mechanisms such as ML-KEM and ML-DSA address quantum-vulnerable public-key functions and generally introduce larger keys, ciphertexts, signatures, certificates, or protocol messages. This review therefore emphasizes interoperability, firmware upgradability, crypto-agility, and lifecycle management rather than physical device-size growth. A conceptual three-phase roadmap for 2025–2035 is presented in which quantum-vulnerable public-key mechanisms are progressively supplemented and, where appropriate, replaced by hybrid classical–post-quantum and then post-quantum-capable architectures, while standardized symmetric/lightweight protection remains in use where it satisfies application requirements. The roadmap dates are planning intervals rather than universal adoption forecasts.
The rapid evolution of 5G and emerging 6G telecom networks introduces new security challenges due to the potential threat posed by quantum computing to conventional cryptographic algorithms. This study proposes a post-quantum cryptographic framework for protecting critical 5G and 6G telecom infrastructure against quantum-enabled attacks. The framework investigates quantum-resistant cryptographic mechanisms for secure key establishment, authentication, data confidentiality, and communication integrity. Performance is evaluated using key size, encryption and decryption time, computational overhead, latency, and throughput. The proposed approach aims to achieve a balance between quantum resistance and network efficiency, providing a scalable and resilient security solution for next-generation wireless communication environments.
With the rapid advancement of quantum computing, existing cryptographic schemes in 4G LTE and 5G networks confront serious security threats. Traditional reliance on protocols like IPsec and Transport Layer Security leaves infrastructure vulnerable to future quantum attacks, particularly “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” attacks, where adversaries store current encrypted traffic for future decryption. To counter these threats, Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) have become potential solutions. As future 6G networks aim to realize ultra-reliable and ubiquitous secure connectivity, it is essential to incorporate both PQC and QKD solutions to ensure long-term robustness. Therefore, the synergy of these security solutions and 5G draws the attention of researchers and practitioners worldwide. This study systematically reviews the literature in this specific field. We analyzed evidence from reviewed literature to address three research questions, resulting in a novel taxonomy to categorize publications in this area and a vision for a quantum-safe 6G network. Moreover, we discussed several open challenges in 5G, PQC, and QKD, along with future work.
Sixth-generation (6G) networks offer unprecedented ultra-reliability, capacity, and low-latency communication. Nevertheless, the same developments also pose security threats to complex communication infrastructures that may be resistant to traditional cryptographic tools, especially in the context of quantum computing. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is an innovative technique for achieving unconditional security that leverages quantum-mechanical principles to share cryptographic keys securely. This paper discusses how QKD can be integrated into 6G and beyond networks and used to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of data across applications such as autonomous systems, the Internet of Things (IoT), and smart city infrastructure. This paper explores the architecture of QKD-based 6G communication, key-generation systems, and quantum-resistant network layers. It also examines scalability, synchronization, and hardware implementation, and suggests possible hybrid approaches for integrating classical and quantum security protocols. The results imply that the idea of QKD may become the foundation of safeguarded communication systems in the future, ensuring resilience against attacks in the quantum era and enabling individuals to trust the next generation of wireless.
The advent of quantum computing has precipitated an estimated attack resistant cryptography system necessitating quantum attacks. The classical asymmetric algorithms, i.e., RSA and ECC are susceptible to Shor algorithm and a transition should be made to Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) anymore. The novelty of this work lies in providing a unified comparative framework that analyzes PQC families through security assumptions, concrete key/ciphertext sizes, and implementation complexity an aspect not addressed collectively in prior surveys. This survey gives a general picture of the status of the design process and general evaluation of PQC accounting its application within the paradigm of the diversified networks including the IoT and 5G/6G and in the cyber-physical environment. Furthermore, this review uniquely synthesizes practical hybrid‑deployment strategies, including protocol layering, coexistence models, and backward‑compatibility mechanisms, offering actionable guidance for real‑world migration. Additionally, the manuscript contributes a prioritized list of open problems across IoT, 5G/6G, blockchain, and cyber‑physical systems, highlighting domains facing the most urgent quantum‑resilience challenges. In this paper, the authors will evaluate the most popular PQC schemes, including schemes based on lattice, code, hash, and isogeny, depending on their performance, scalability, and interoperability (with reference to the recent research). It also examines the problems of integration as implemented with respect to the computational overhead, latency and adoption of hybrid with classical cryptography. This is expounded more to the standardization of PQC by NISTs and with a focus on such algorithms as CRYSTALS-Kyber and Dilithium. The findings suggest that, hybrid PQC protocols are able to control quantum resistance and actual performance in numerous infrastructures in computing systems.
The advent of sixth-generation (6 G) networks introduces transformative communication paradigms characterized by ultra-low latency, massive device connectivity, and unprecedented reliability. These developments also expose networks to complex and dynamic cybersecurity threats and challenge the adequacy of traditional encryption methods against the emerging capabilities of quantum computing. Utilizing the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics, Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) provides unconditional security of communications by enabling the detection of eavesdropping attempts. We systematically analyze existing QKD protocols, designs, and application scenarios while addressing technological limitations and potential solutions. In addition, we explore the future directions necessary to realize scalable, efficient, and practical quantum-secured 6 G networks. Our findings emphasize the strategic importance of QKD as a cornerstone technology for building ultra-secure, quantumresilient communication infrastructures in the era of 6 G.