Workshop: Are Physical-layer Security Concepts Actually Able to Deliver on its Promises in Post Quantum Era?

Physical-layer security is often treated as a niche enhancement that is relevant only for ultra-sensitive links or exotic use cases. This view, however, may be dangerously outdated.

As optical infrastructures become more open, programmable, and widely shared, the attack surface at the physical layer is expanding in ways that are difficult to detect and even harder to mitigate with higher-layer cryptography alone. Are we overestimating the protection offered by encryption while underestimating vulnerabilities such as fiber tapping, signal leakage, or device fingerprinting?

And in a future shaped by quantum capabilities, when does physical-layer security shift from optional to essential? What alternatives beyond QKD could realistically mitigate the impact of quantum-enabled attacks? What is the need for different solutions in different parts of the network?

This workshop challenges the notion that physical-layer techniques are merely complementary, and instead asks whether they should be considered a foundational requirement for securing next-generation networks.