Combining quantum safe cryptography and quantum key distribution to protect data
Combining Post-Quantum Cryptography and Quantum Key Distribution: Taxonomy, Constructions, Proofs, Standards, Deployments and Open Problems
Cryptography and Security
Summary
As quantum computers become more powerful, they threaten current encryption methods. The authors explain two ways to protect data: one uses new math-based encryption thought to resist quantum hacking (post-quantum cryptography), and the other uses quantum physics to create secret keys (quantum key distribution). They describe how combining these two approaches can improve security since each protects against different risks. The paper reviews existing protocols, standards, real deployments, and points out challenges still to be solved.
What this means in practice
- •For network security teams: Use combined post-quantum and quantum key distribution techniques to enhance the security of encrypted communications against future quantum attacks.
- •For telecommunications infrastructure engineers: Implement hybrid PQC-QKD protocols in metropolitan or national quantum networks to improve key delivery robustness and comply with emerging standards.
A survey. It maps existing work.
Authors
Mona Alotaibi, Noora Fetais, Saif Al-Kuwari
Abstract
Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and quantum key distribution (QKD) address the quantum threat from opposite directions: PQC replaces vulnerable public-key algorithms with schemes believed to resist quantum cryptanalysis, while QKD derives keys whose secrecy rests on physical assumptions rather than computational ones. Because each approach has a distinct failure mode, a growing body of work combines them so that a session key remains secure if either component holds. We first establish the deployed baseline, hybrid classical-plus-PQC key exchange, against which QKD-augmented designs must be judged. We then propose a taxonomy of hybrid PQC-QKD designs along eight dimensions (integration layer, combiner construction, authentication scope and source, QKD topology, trusted entities, key-delivery interface, classical component, and evidence type), and use it to compare published protocols, including Muckle and its successors, MACsec and TLS integrations, and IKEv2 mechanisms standardised in RFCs 8784, 9370, and 9867. We examine key-combiner constructions in light of the KEM-combiner literature and of NIST, ETSI, and ITU-T guidance, and map the security arguments for hybrid PQC-QKD protocols onto a common grid of security model, assumptions, permitted compromise, established guarantee, and limitations. We synthesise deployment evidence from metropolitan and national QKD networks, distinguishing the few testbeds that have run PQC in the key path from pure-QKD deployments, and summarise the standards and policy landscape, including the positions of national security agencies that recommend against relying on QKD alone. We close with open problems: authentication of the QKD classical channel, shared-infrastructure threat models, device certification versus formal proofs, formal verification of hybrid handshakes, and the lack of peer-reviewed deployment economics.