Lightweight Key Management Mechanism Using Lattice‐Based Encryption for <scp>IoT</scp> Data Management Systems

ABSTRACT The rapid expansion of IoT ecosystems has intensified challenges in securely managing large volumes of sensitive data generated by devices operating under constraints of limited computation, energy, and bandwidth. Conventional key management and authentication mechanisms struggle with scalability and efficiency, increasing susceptibility to emerging security threats. To address these limitations, this study proposes a lightweight, post‐quantum secure key management framework that integrates lattice‐based encryption with Ciphertext‐Policy Attribute‐Based Encryption (CP‐ABE). The model incorporates SHA‐512–based authentication to ensure device integrity and employs Elastic Search with MapReduce for scalable data compression and handling. End‐to‐end confidentiality is maintained through secure encryption, dynamic re‐encryption, and fine‐grained cloud‐based access control. MATLAB simulations validate system performance, demonstrating improved encryption and decryption times of 145 and 160 ms, surpassing traditional CP‐ABE and RSA approaches. Key generation and update times are reduced to 120 and 95 ms, enabling dynamic policy management. Authentication accuracy reaches 98.7% precision and 97.9% recall, ensuring reliable device verification, while Elastic Search and MapReduce achieve 250 MB/s throughput and reduce network load by 35% via data‐locality scheduling. Re‐encryption overhead remains low at 130 ms, with minimal resource usage (20% CPU, 25 MB memory), supporting constrained devices. Scalability tests show only modest latency growth up to 200 nodes. The proposed lattice‐based CP‐ABE framework offers a secure, efficient, and scalable solution for next‐generation IoT environments. Future work will extend applicability to larger networks and integrate AI‐driven adaptive security for enhanced resilience.