Smart healthcare industry is increasingly relying on Internet of Things (IoT) devices to improve patient care and operational efficiency. However, the cryptographic algorithms that enable fundamental security and are widely used in these cyber systems are vulnerable to attacks by emerging quantum computers - known as Quantum Threat. This paper examines the quantum threat to healthcare IoT across the four layers of the IoT architecture: physical, network, perception, and application. It proposes a comprehensive migration framework integrating a phased hybrid approach with crypto-agility to transition healthcare IoT systems to quantum-safe cryptography. This framework prioritises resource-constrained devices, emphasises interoperability, and considers the challenges of vendor readiness and infrastructure upgrades. This paper contributes a detailed, phased migration plan specifically tailored to the unique security needs and resource limitations of IoT-based healthcare systems.
Smart healthcare industry is increasingly relying on Internet of Things (IoT) devices to improve patient care and operational efficiency. However, the cryptographic algorithms that enable fundamental security and are widely used in these cyber systems are vulnerable to attacks by emerging quantum computers - known as Quantum Threat. This paper examines the quantum threat to healthcare IoT across the four layers of the IoT architecture: physical, network, perception, and application. It proposes a comprehensive migration framework integrating a phased hybrid approach with crypto-agility to transition healthcare IoT systems to quantum-safe cryptography. This framework prioritises resource-constrained devices, emphasises interoperability, and considers the challenges of vendor readiness and infrastructure upgrades. This paper contributes a detailed, phased migration plan specifically tailored to the unique security needs and resource limitations of IoT-based healthcare systems.
Smart healthcare industry is increasingly relying on Internet of Things (IoT) devices to improve patient care and operational efficiency. However, the cryptographic algorithms that enable fundamental security and are widely used in these cyber systems are vulnerable to attacks by emerging quantum computers - known as Quantum Threat. This paper examines the quantum threat to healthcare IoT across the four layers of the IoT architecture: physical, network, perception, and application. It proposes a comprehensive migration framework integrating a phased hybrid approach with crypto-agility to transition healthcare IoT systems to quantum-safe cryptography. This framework prioritises resource-constrained devices, emphasises interoperability, and considers the challenges of vendor readiness and infrastructure upgrades. This paper contributes a detailed, phased migration plan specifically tailored to the unique security needs and resource limitations of IoT-based healthcare systems.
The imminent arrival of quantum computing presents unprecedented challenges to Internet of Things (IoT) security, threatening to compromise the cryptographic protocols that safeguard billions of connected devices worldwide. This article examines the critical intersection of quantum computing capabilities and IoT vulnerabilities, with particular emphasis on resource-constrained devices, heterogeneous networks, and legacy system integration. This article presents a comprehensive framework for implementing quantum-resistant security measures in IoT environments, introducing a hybrid approach that combines lightweight quantum-resistant algorithms with modular architecture design. This article demonstrates traditional encryption methods like RSA and ECC remain vulnerable to quantum attacks; strategic implementation of lattice-based and hash-based cryptography can provide robust protection without overwhelming device resources. This article also addresses practical considerations for industry adoption, including development lifecycle integration, governance frameworks, and compliance requirements. Through examination of real-world implementation scenarios, this article establishes a successful quantum-resistant IoT security required for a balanced approach between immediate protective measures and long-term strategic planning, providing organizations with actionable guidelines for securing their IoT infrastructure against quantum threats.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has transformed healthcare, facilitating remote patient monitoring, enhanced medication adherence, and chronic disease management. However, this interconnected ecosystem faces significant vulnerabilities with the advent of quantum computing, which threatens to break existing encryption standards protecting sensitive patient data in IoT-enabled medical devices. This chapter examines the quantum threat to healthcare IoT security, highlighting the potential impacts of compromised encryption, including privacy breaches, device failures, and manipulated medical records. It introduces post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and quantum-resistant techniques like quantum key distribution (QKD), addressing their application in resource-constrained healthcare IoT devices such as pacemakers, monitoring tools, and telemedicine systems. The chapter further explores the challenges of integrating these solutions and reviews global efforts in mitigating quantum risks, offering insights into suitable PQC primitives for various healthcare use cases.
Quantum computing poses a significant threat to classical asymmetric cryptography, which is essential for ensuring confidentiality, authentication, and key exchange in contemporary digital infrastructures. Although post-quantum cryptography (PQC) provides mechanisms that resist quantum attacks, its implementation in Internet of Things (IoT) systems is challenged by constrained resources, including limitations in computation, memory, energy, latency, and bandwidth, and the heterogeneity of devices. This paper offers a comprehensive narrative review of PQC approaches applicable to IoT, systematically organizing 30 peer-reviewed studies published between 2022 and 2026 across four layers: device, communication, distributed trust, and application. Additionally, the review examines two cross-cutting dimensions, privacy and side-channel resistance. The analysis indicates a significant prevalence of lattice-based schemes, hybrid strategies, and integrations with blockchain technology, zero-knowledge proofs, federated learning, homomorphic encryption, AI, and Zero Trust architectures. Notably, key gaps remain in side-channel evaluation, migration pathways, deployment costs, and real-world validation—issues that are particularly critical given the long lifecycles of IoT devices and the ongoing threat of “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has grown rapidly, transforming various aspects of daily life into intelligent systems capable of collecting and exchanging data in real time. At the same time, advances in quantum computing have given rise to powerful quantum computers capable of processing complex tasks at unprecedented speed. This disparity between the limited resources of IoT devices and the capabilities of quantum computers poses significant security challenges. Quantum computers introduce new vulnerabilities that threaten IoT systems, particularly in critical applications such as connected healthcare, industrial networks, smart infrastructure, and secure embedded systems. This study reviews the existing literature on post-quantum cryptography (PQC) applied to IoT devices. It analyzes the characteristics and security requirements of IoT environments, current security technologies, and unresolved issues. It highlights the growing threat of post-quantum attacks and the need to adapt security strategies. Finally, the study explores post-quantum code-based cryptosystems as solutions to enhance the security of resource-constrained IoT applications and ensure their resilience against future challenges.
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.