Enhancing Cryptographic Security in Smart Consumer Electronics With a Hybrid Classical–Post-Quantum Framework

With the proliferation of smart consumer electronics in edge computing environments, ensuring lightweight and longterm cryptographic security has become a pressing concern. Traditional encryption standards such as AES and ECC are increasingly vulnerable in the face of quantum computing advancements, necessitating quantum-resistant alternatives to safeguard future IoT ecosystems. This study proposes a hybrid cryptographic framework that combines AES-128 and ECC-P256 with quantum-resistant CRYSTALS-Kyber and CRYSTALSDilithium, aiming to secure smart consumer electronics against confidentiality attacks while ensuring forward secrecy in message authentication. The framework utilizes two encryption keys, ECC and Kyber, to hash the session key using SHA-256. Data encryption employs AES-128, while Dilithium signatures authenticate messages through the session key. The framework was evaluated using real-world IoT traffic from the Edge-IIoTset and CICIoT2023 datasets, deployed across four Azure B2s nodes simulating consumer-grade edge environments. Simultaneously, the simulation measured entropy, correlation values, and decryption capabilities following key tampering, as well as the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) under noise attacks and recovery rates from packet loss. The proposed hybrid scheme achieved entropy levels exceeding 7.999 while maintaining zero correlation strength compared to classical and post-quantum cryptography (PQC)-only schemes. The system demonstrated a 100% key success rate with standard keys; however, it exhibited failure when encountering a 2-bit key error, indicating its high sensitivity to key variations. The hybrid scheme attained a PSNR of 34.5 dB while subjected to 30% noise and successfully recovered 88.9% of packets under 20% loss conditions, further confirming its robustness in adverse communication conditions. These results demonstrate the framework’s practical viability in securing smart consumer devices while preparing them for future quantum-era threats.