Lifecycle-Aware Post-Quantum Cryptography with Provenance Verification for Secure Cloud Microservices

Abstract

The transition from classical cryptographic schemes to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) in cloud microservices introduces significant challenges in maintaining performance, interoperability, and verifiable trust. This work presents Lifecycle-Aware Post-Quantum Cryptography with Provenance Verification for Secure Cloud Microservices (LAPQC), a novel framework that enables controlled and traceable cryptographic evolution across distributed service environments. Unlike existing approaches that rely on static replacement of cryptographic primitives, the proposed model introduces a lifecycle-aware transition mechanism combined with provenance-driven verification. The framework comprises two core modules. The Lifecycle-Aware PQC Transition Engine (LAPTE) facilitates adaptive switching between classical, hybrid, and PQC schemes based on operational context, ensuring seamless migration without service disruption. The Cryptographic Provenance and Verification Engine (CPVE) maintains verifiable records of cryptographic operations, enabling integrity validation, auditability, and protection against downgrade and substitution attacks. Experimental evaluation is conducted using metrics such as throughput and end-to-end latency under real-time workloads. Observed results indicate that while classical AES achieves maximum throughput, the proposed hybrid PQC scheme maintains competitive throughput levels while significantly improving quantum resilience. Furthermore, the hybrid approach demonstrates a balanced trade-off between performance and security compared to standalone lattice-based and hash-based PQC methods, which exhibit higher latency overheads. The integration of lifecycle-aware transition with cryptographic provenance introduces a new paradigm for secure and verifiable PQC adoption, making LAPQC a scalable and robust solution for next-generation cloud microservice architectures.