AI guided trust evaluation and quantum resistant certificate management for next-generation PKI security

Quantum computing has an impact on the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) as defined by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST’s) post quantum cryptography (PQC) standardization reports because Shor’s algorithm renders Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) insecure. This work presents a new approach for combining real-time graph neural network (GNN) based trust propagation with lattice based PQC which creates an adaptive feedback loop for certificate management. Under quantum attack simulation, the system achieves less than 120ms latency for certificate issuance and has 92.3% detection accuracy of a malicious certificate. Trained using a combined dataset of certificate revocation logs, fake adversarial activities and quantum threat simulation, it dynamically models trust graphs to fight evolving threats. Experimental results indicate 47% less time of anomaly resolution compared to traditional PKI with scalability for IoT and enterprise environments. This dual layered architecture offers a paradigm for an architecture for a scalable, adaptive, and quantum resilient next-generation PKI to overcome some of the immediate and long-term challenges in cybersecurity.