<b>Securing IoT Devices against Quantum Threats:</b><b>Developing a Framework for Future-Proof Encryption</b>

Quantum Computers are designed to be sufficiently large to be able to efficiently solve specific problems that would take an impractical amount of time to solve using classical computers. The most widely discussed application of quantum computing technology is more powerful algorithms, which efficiently solves all instances of integer factorization—a number theoretic problem that is the foundation of the most of the existing public-key encryption schemes. This means that all public-key cryptographic systems commonly used on the Internet for security will become as insecure as an open communication channel, easy to eavesdrop on or to tamper with. Moreover, traffic passes through numerous fixed, mobile and personal sensors connected to the Internet. This extremely large amount of data becomes the “air” of IoT and only a small part of it will be automatically analysed for a specific purpose. Nevertheless, an important part of the immense amount of data exchanged across the network is sensitive. Presently, these data communication and storage are protected by encryption, but that means of protection will be lost to a future quantum adversary. Because of these urgent necessities, products implementing quantum-resistant security solutions can be built and put into operation in a “post-quantum world”. This must be done now because cryptography research is currently inventing and standardizing new cryptographic algorithms. Once the new algorithms are widely and publicly agreed upon, systems with old encryption will remain vulnerable. This topic is motivated by the above.