Securing IoT systems in a post-quantum environment: Vulnerabilities, attacks, and possible solutions

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the distributed systems environment connecting billions of devices to the Internet, and quantum computing is an emerging technology that has a positive impact on IoT security by speeding up data processing while also having a negative impact due to post-quantum security attacks. In this survey, we provide detailed information on the possible post-quantum security attacks that threaten the security of the layers of IoT systems in terms of their vulnerabilities. Also, we provide detailed information on the existing solutions against post-quantum security attacks and show how limitations in these solutions decrease the security performance. Furthermore, we develop classification models to allow the readers to choose the best security approach against post-quantum security attacks in terms of IoT layers. Finally, we show the open challenges of the surveyed quantum security solutions and propose a framework based on quantum machine learning that takes advantage of optical pulses of secure communication as a future solution for detecting post-quantum security attacks.