PQEdgeAuth: Postquantum Secure Edge-Assisted Cross Domain Authentication With Efficient Consensus

Blockchain has been increasingly adopted in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) for cross domain authentication, enabling trusted collaboration among multiple management domains and supporting decentralized trust management. However, existing authentication schemes, particularly those based on classical public-key cryptography such as RSA and ECC, are vulnerable to quantum attacks and still face significant challenges in computation overhead. These limitations make them insufficient for the practical demands of complex, multi-domain environments, especially in the context of future quantum threats. To address these challenges, this article proposes PQEdgeAuth, an edge-assisted authentication scheme for IIoT that integrates post-quantum secure authentication with an optimized consensus protocol. The scheme incorporates post-quantum cryptographic techniques to ensure long-term security against quantum adversaries, while employing location-based grouping and aggregation signatures to reduce consensus communication overhead and enhance scalability. Experimental results show that PQEdgeAuth reduces computation time by up to 35.23% and improves throughput by up to 54.38% compared to existing schemes, demonstrating its potential to offer a secure, scalable, and efficient solution for cross domain authentication in IIoT environments.