QUANTUM-ASSISTED HYBRID SECURITY FRAMEWORK FOR SECURE AUTHENTICATION WITH INTRUSION DETECTION FOR 5G NETWORKS

5G networks provides a lot of connectivity and are very advanced but also brings a lot of security challenges. These challenges include managing keys that can resist quantum attacks, making sure users are secure and detecting unwanted access in real time. Traditional security methods and machine learning tools are not safe against both regular and quantum-based attacks. This work introduces QSA-IDF (Quantum-Assisted Secure Authentication and Intrusion Detection Framework), a BB84-based Quantum Key Distribution hybrid security framework for quantum-driven secure authentication and Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC) for quantum-driven intrusion detection. The framework is simulated using IBM Qiskit and implemented on MEC-edge layers using NS-3 and Mininet, simulating actual 5G slices. Experimental findings on CICIDS 2018 dataset show 99% detection accuracy, 98% F1-score, and higher quantum fidelity scores than classical baselines. Comparison with SVM, RF, and CNN models indicates the scalability and robustness of the quantum system. The contribution of the paper lies in offering a fully integrated, end-to-end quantum-secure security framework solving key limitations of existing 5G security architectures and providing scalable efforts towards 6G-ready quantum-secure communications.