On the Figures of Merit for Quantum Software Security: Toward a Benchmarking Rubric

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 6 Aug 2026] On the Figures of Merit for Quantum Software Security: Toward a Benchmarking Rubric Badhon Rahman, Majid Haghparast, Tommi Mikkonen Quantum software is increasingly provided through multi-tenant and cloud-based Quantum-as-a-Service (QaaS) stacks. A growing concern about the diverse attack vectors across the pipeline has been demonstrated in recent research. Yet the community has converged on three mature pillars: Scale (Qubit Count), Quality (Quantum Volume), and Speed (Circuit Layer Operations per Second (CLOPS)) for the merit performance figures. Moreover, it has also begun to define software-quality metrics. However, the security of quantum software remains largely unmeasured. A few quantitative security indicators, such as Total Variation Distance (TVD) and Degree of Functional Corruption (DFC), exist. Although they were introduced ad hoc for individual circuit obfuscation techniques, they are incompatible. We assert that the security of quantum software deserves the same attention as the performance: an explicit set of Security Figures of Merit (S-FoMs). The research of this paper is threefold: (i) characterizes a three-layer measurement gap, (ii) proposes a structured S-FoM set organized by ISO/IEC 25010 security sub-characteristics, QaaS pipeline mapping, and measurement maturity, and (iii) defines a benchmarking rubric that normalizes and aggregates S-FoMs into a combined Quantum Software Security Posture (QSSP) score. Additionally, an illustrative reanalysis of published obfuscation techniques has been presented. Our aim is a first step toward security-aware benchmarking of the Quantum Software Stack (QSS). Comments: 4 pages, 1 figure. Accepted at the 6th International Workshop on Quantum Software Engineering and Technology (Q-SET 2026), co-located with IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing & Engineering (QCE26) Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2608.05831 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2608.05831v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.05831 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Badhon Rahman [view email] [v1] Thu, 6 Aug 2026 09:59:49 UTC (11 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)