Future scenarios and challenges for security and privacy

Over the past half-century, technology has evolved beyond our wildest dreams. However, while the benefits of technological growth are undeniable, the nascent Internet did not anticipate the online threats we routinely encounter and the harms which can result. As our world becomes increasingly connected, it is critical we consider what implications current and future technologies have for security and privacy. We approach this challenge by surveying 30 predictions across industry, academia and international organisations to extract a number of common themes. Through this, we distill 10 emerging scenarios and reflect on the impact these might have on a range of stakeholders. Considering gaps in best practice and requirements for further research, we explore how security and privacy might evolve over the next decade. We find that existing guidelines both fail to consider the relationships between stakeholders and do not address the novel risks from wearable devices and insider threats. Our approach rigorously analyses emerging scenarios and suggests future improvements, of crucial importance as we look to pre-empt new technological threats

Federated Learning in Intelligent Transportation Systems: Recent Applications and Open Problems

Intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) have been fueled by the rapid development of communication technologies, sensor technologies, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Nonetheless, due to the dynamic characteristics of the vehicle networks, it is rather challenging to make timely and accurate decisions of vehicle behaviors. Moreover, in the presence of mobile wireless communications, the privacy and security of vehicle information are at constant risk. In this context, a new paradigm is urgently needed for various applications in dynamic vehicle environments. As a distributed machine learning technology, federated learning (FL) has received extensive attention due to its outstanding privacy protection properties and easy scalability. We conduct a comprehensive survey of the latest developments in FL for ITS. Specifically, we initially research the prevalent challenges in ITS and elucidate the motivations for applying FL from various perspectives. Subsequently, we review existing deployments of FL in ITS across various scenarios, and discuss specific potential issues in object recognition, traffic management, and service providing scenarios. Furthermore, we conduct a further analysis of the new challenges introduced by FL deployment and the inherent limitations that FL alone cannot fully address, including uneven data distribution, limited storage and computing power, and potential privacy and security concerns. We then examine the existing collaborative technologies that can help mitigate these challenges. Lastly, we discuss the open challenges that remain to be addressed in applying FL in ITS and propose several future research directions

On the Integration of Blockchain and SDN: Overview, Applications, and Future Perspectives

Blockchain (BC) and software-defined networking (SDN) are leading technologies which have recently found applications in several network-related scenarios and have consequently experienced a growing interest in the research community. Indeed, current networks connect a massive number of objects over the Internet and in this complex scenario, to ensure security, privacy, confidentiality, and programmability, the utilization of BC and SDN have been successfully proposed. In this work, we provide a comprehensive survey regarding these two recent research trends and review the related state-of-the-art literature. We first describe the main features of each technology and discuss their most common and used variants. Furthermore, we envision the integration of such technologies to jointly take advantage of these latter efficiently. Indeed, we consider their group-wise utilization—named BC–SDN—based on the need for stronger security and privacy. Additionally, we cover the application fields of these technologies both individually and combined. Finally, we discuss the open issues of reviewed research and describe potential directions for future avenues regarding the integration of BC and SDN. To summarize, the contribution of the present survey spans from an overview of the literature background on BC and SDN to the discussion of the benefits and limitations of BC–SDN integration in different fields, which also raises open challenges and possible future avenues examined herein. To the best of our knowledge, compared to existing surveys, this is the first work that analyzes the aforementioned aspects in light of a broad BC–SDN integration, with a specific focus on security and privacy issues in actual utilization scenarios

A Systematic Literature Review on Blockchain Enabled Federated Learning Framework for Internet of Vehicles

While the convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques with improved information technology systems ensured enormous benefits to the Internet of Vehicles (IoVs) systems, it also introduced an increased amount of security and privacy threats. To ensure the security of IoVs data, privacy preservation methodologies have gained significant attention in the literature. However, these strategies also need specific adjustments and modifications to cope with the advances in IoVs design. In the interim, Federated Learning (FL) has been proven as an emerging idea to protect IoVs data privacy and security. On the other hand, Blockchain technology is showing prominent possibilities with secured, dispersed, and auditable data recording and sharing schemes. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on the application and implementation of Blockchain-Enabled Federated Learning frameworks for IoVs. Besides, probable issues, challenges, solutions, and future research directions for BC-Enabled FL frameworks for IoVs are also presented. This survey can further be used as the basis for developing modern BC-Enabled FL solutions to resolve different data privacy issues and scenarios of IoVs

Blockchain-assisted UAV communication systems: a comprehensive survey

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently established their capacity to provide cost-effective and credible solutions for various real-world scenarios. UAVs provide an immense variety of services due to their autonomy, mobility, adaptability, and communications interoperability. Despite the expansive use of UAVs to support ground communications, data exchanges in those networks are susceptible to security threats because most communication is through radio or Wi-Fi signals, which are easy to hack. While several techniques exist to protect against cyberattacks. Recently emerging technology blockchain could be one of promising ways to enhance data security and user privacy in peer-to-peer UAV networks. Borrowing the superiorities of blockchain, multiple entities can communicate securely, decentralized, and equitably. This article comprehensively overviews privacy and security integration in blockchain-assisted UAV communication. For this goal, we present a set of fundamental analyses and critical requirements that can help build privacy and security models for blockchain and help manage and support decentralized data storage systems. The UAV communication system's security requirements and objectives, including availability, authentication, authorization, confidentiality, integrity, privacy, and non-repudiation, are thoroughly examined to provide a deeper insight. We wrap up with a discussion of open research challenges, the constraints of current UAV standards, and potential future research directions

On the Integration of Blockchain and SDN: Overview, Applications, and Future Perspectives

Blockchain (BC) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) are leading technologies which have recently found applications in several network-related scenarios and have consequently experienced a growing interest in the research community. Indeed, current networks connect a massive number of objects over the Internet and in this complex scenario, to ensure security, privacy, confidentiality, and programmability, the utilization of BC and SDN have been successfully proposed. In this work, we provide a comprehensive survey regarding these two recent research trends and review the related state-of-the-art literature. We first describe the main features of each technology and discuss their most common and used variants. Furthermore, we envision the integration of such technologies to jointly take advantage of these latter efficiently. Indeed, we consider their group-wise utilization -- named BC-SDN -- based on the need for stronger security and privacy. Additionally, we cover the application fields of these technologies both individually and combined. Finally, we discuss the open issues of reviewed research and describe potential directions for future avenues regarding the integration of BC and SDN. To summarize, the contribution of the present survey spans from an overview of the literature background on BC and SDN to the discussion of the benefits and limitations of BC-SDN integration in different fields, which also raises open challenges and possible future avenues examined herein. To the best of our knowledge, compared to existing surveys, this is the first work that analyzes the aforementioned aspects in light of a broad BC-SDN integration, with a specific focus on security and privacy issues in actual utilization scenarios.Comment: 42 pages, 14 figures, to be published in Journal of Network and Systems Management - Special Issue on Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers in Network and Service Managemen