Post-quantum cognitive zero trust architecture for healthcare IoT devices

Area of Science:

• Cybersecurity
• Internet of Things (IoT)
• Quantum Computing

Background:

• Healthcare IoT systems face increasing cybersecurity risks from classical and quantum threats.
• Resource-constrained devices are vulnerable, necessitating advanced security measures.
• Emerging quantum computing can break current encryption standards like RSA and ECC.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a quantum-resilient security framework for healthcare IoT systems.
• To maintain low-latency performance for non-real-time clinical traffic.
• To protect against both classical and post-quantum cyberattacks.

Main Methods:

• Proposed the Post-Quantum Cognitive Zero-Trust Architecture (PQ-CZTA).
• Integrated NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptography (CRYSTALS-Kyber, SPHINCS+).
• Employed a lightweight cognitive engine with machine learning classifiers trained on diverse intrusion detection datasets.
• Utilized SMOTE oversampling and 5-fold cross-validation for robust training.

Main Results:

• Achieved excellent detection performance with F1-scores from 0.972 to 1.000.
• Demonstrated acceptable latency (3.1-4.4 seconds) for non-real-time healthcare IoT traffic.
• Proved the importance of SMOTE and cognitive ML components through ablation studies.
• Showcased PQ-CZTA's effectiveness on modern IoT traffic.

Conclusions:

• PQ-CZTA offers a practical, quantum-resilient framework for healthcare IoT.
• Enhances patient data privacy and HIPAA compliance through adaptive risk scoring.
• Predicts attacks on resource-constrained devices and supports resilient healthcare systems against future quantum threats.