The Internet of Things Connectivity Binge: What are the Implications?

Despite wide concern about cyberattacks, outages and privacy violations, most experts believe the Internet of Things will continue to expand successfully the next few years, tying machines to machines and linking people to valuable resources, services and opportunities

Exploring Current Trends and Challenges in Cybersecurity: A Comprehensive Survey

Cyber security is the process of preventing unauthorized access, theft, damage, and interruption to computers, servers, networks, and data. It entails putting policies into place to guarantee the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of information and information systems. Cyber security seeks to protect against a variety of dangers, including as hacking, data breaches, malware infections, and other nefarious actions.  Cyber security has grown to be a major worry as a result of the quick development of digital technology and the growing interconnection of our contemporary society. In order to gain insight into the constantly changing world of digital threats and the countermeasures put in place to address them, this survey seeks to study current trends and issues in the area of cyber security. The study includes responses from end users, business executives, IT administrators, and experts across a wide variety of businesses and sectors. The survey gives insight on important problems such the sorts of cyber threats encountered, the efficacy of current security solutions, future technology influencing cyber security, and the human elements leading to vulnerabilities via a thorough analysis of the replies. The most important conclusions include an evaluation of the most common cyber dangers, such as malware, phishing scams, ransom ware, and data breaches, as well as an investigation of the methods and tools used to counter these threats. The survey explores the significance of staff education and awareness in bolstering cyber security defenses and pinpoints opportunities for development in this area. The survey also sheds insight on how cutting-edge technologies like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are affecting cyber security practices. It analyses the advantages and disadvantages of using these technologies while taking into account issues like data privacy, infrastructure security, and the need for specialized skills. The survey also looks at the compliance environment, assessing how industry norms and regulatory frameworks affect cyber security procedures. The survey studies the obstacles organizations encounter in attaining compliance and assesses the degree of knowledge and commitment to these requirements. The results of this cyber security survey help to better understand the current status of cyber security and provide organizations and individual’s useful information for creating effective policies to protect digital assets. This study seeks to promote a proactive approach to cyber security, allowing stakeholders to stay ahead of threats and build a safe digital environment by identifying relevant trends and concerns

From Ingsoc to Skynet it is not only science fiction: From novels and science fiction to quasi-reality

The contribution will provide an overview on the following side effects of tangible and intangible impact of cyber technologies with specific focus on the oversupply of information (info-obesity), resulting in its devaluation and loss of trust to professional media; monopolization in the field of communication, information and digital technologies (mainstream communication, freedom of speech); the transformation of the Internet from a space for the free exchange of ideas into a tool for supervision and management (the betrayal of IT revolution) , with Internet companies turning into digital giants, moving from digital platforms to digital ecosystems and annexing not only cyberspace, but also real sector industries (monopoly and dominant position); the massive decrease in the level of critical thinking and the emergence of waves of information epidemics of national and global levels (mainstream communication, limited contraposition, fake fake-news); post-truth in its heyday, with public perception shaped more by means of addressing feelings and personal opinion rather than actual facts, with fakes, clickbaits, hypes and other tools introduced to form post-reality in the political and media culture; changing the system of values – with the new normal (semantic shifts, etc), new ethics putting personal free will and freedom of choice under question; traditional cultural regulators of social relations (covid 19 example) and processes being displaced by automated social algorithms (increasing role of algorithms and ML); blurring the borders between the real and the digital world, wide spread of simplified virtual mock-ups and simulacra; mass collection of data for managing people's behaviour (evaporation of privacy, data protection), formation of an appropriate economic imperative to direct the development for business, society and states; increasing the level of conflict in society (between individuals and groups – haters, discrimination) and between states (XXI Century warfare, soft concerns)

European Values for Ethics in Digital Technology

Digital Ethics deals with the impact of digital Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on our societies and the environment at large. It covers a wide spectrum of societal and ethical impacts including issues such as data governance, privacy and personal data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), algorithmic decision-making and pervasive technologies. Importantly, it is not only about hardware and software, but it also concerns systems, how people and organizations and society and technology interact. In addition, with Digital Ethics comes the added variable of assessing the ethical implications of artefacts which may not yet exist, or artefacts which may have impacts we cannot predict. The Ethics4EU Project is an Erasmus+ transnational project that explores issues around teaching Digital Ethics in Computer Science. This research report on European Values for Ethics in Technology is the first Intellectual Output of the Ethics4EU project and it is presented in two parts: Part 1 used a semi-systematic literature review methodology to discuss and present the origins of Digital Ethics, recent views from EU working groups on Digital Ethics, geographical perceptions of Digital Ethics and a summary overview of pertinent Digital Ethics topics and challenges for an increasingly interconnected ICT world. These topics include data ethics, including data management and practices, AI Ethics including ethical concerns when building AI systems, automated decision making and AI policy, ethics for pervasive computing including topics such as surveillance, privacy and smart technologies, social media ethics including topics such as balancing free speech and access to accurate information and the relationship between Digital Ethics, digital regulations and digital governance with a specific focus on the GDPR legislation. Part 2 presents the results of focus groups conducted with three key groups of stakeholders – academics, industry specialists and citizens. The analysis captures their insights with regard to ethical concerns they have about new technologies, the skills or training future computer professionals should have to protect themselves in the online world and who should be responsible for teaching Digital Ethics. We analyse the similarities between the topics uncovered in the literature review and those highlighted by the focus group participants