{
  "abstract": "Network operators migrating distributed systems to post-quantum and quantum-safe cryptography face a resource-management problem: quantum key distribution (QKD) gives the strongest guarantee available but is hardware-scarce and costly, so only a fraction of a deployment's links can receive it. Default practice -- ranking links by traffic or centrality and upgrading the top scorers -- optimizes each link in isolation, while a distributed job's real security is set by whichever active link ends up weakest. We present WLPA (Weakest-Link Posture Assignment), an implementation-ready decision framework and algorithm for allocating scarce quantum-safe postures under hardware, latency, and compliance constraints. WLPA computes the optimal weakest-link posture in closed form and returns an assignment in O(|E| log |E|) time -- 125 ms for a 20,000-link network on a laptop -- with a breach-aware refinement matching an exact integer program under common conditions. Our central contribution is a dichotomy telling operators exactly when existing per-link heuristics already match this optimum and when they systematically fail: under constant upgrade cost and uniform traffic-driven risk the two coincide exactly; once costs vary or an adversary concentrates on weak targets, heuristics leave the weakest link unprotected, unboundedly. We validate WLPA across 19 experiments: four microservice topologies, a real enterprise network (SNAP email-Eu-core), a post-quantum latency benchmark, a Qiskit BB84 simulation and a real-hardware BB84 run on IBM's ibm_marrakesh processor, checks against real production traffic traces, a CVE-calibrated correlated-compromise study, Bayesian uncertainty quantification, and seven baseline methods. A concrete-security reduction grounds the framework as theoretical foundation, not primary contribution.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.04897",
  "author_total": 2,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Bhanwar Gupta"
    },
    {
      "name": "Sanjeev Rana"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/a4h5zyhja4vkv.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.04897",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "a4h5zyhja4vkv",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04897",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "cs.CR"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "quant-ph"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1702|Quantum Information and Cryptography"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7220664240",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.04897",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-04",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/a4h5zyhja4vkv.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:27:01Z",
      "native_id": "2610.04897",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04897"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:quant-ph",
      "subfield": "quantum"
    }
  ],
  "title": "WLPA: A Network Management Framework for Allocating Scarce Quantum-Safe Link Postures under Weakest-Link Exposure",
  "title_text": "WLPA: A Network Management Framework for Allocating Scarce Quantum-Safe Link Postures under Weakest-Link Exposure",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:27:01Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/a4h5zyhja4vkv",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}