Aims and Scope

Security and Privacy is an international journal publishing original research and review papers on all areas of security and privacy including Security in Business, Healthcare and Society, Information and Data Security, Communication Security, and Privacy. Other related areas such as Biometric--based Security, Cryptography systems, Embedded Security, Data Analytics for Security and Privacy, Integrated Security Design Schemes, Surveillance, and Critical Infrastructures and Key Resources will be considered as well.

Security in Business, Healthcare and Society

    Healthcare and Bioinformatics security
    Infrastructure (power grids, transport) security
    Finance – incl. mobile payments and mobile banking
    Personal data security
    Mobile commerce security
    Cybercrime and cyberwar
    Cloud Security
    Policy, regulation and legislation
    Business protections / response / recovery
    IT Risk Management
    Malware
    Electronic voting and digital democracy
    Government as a platform
    Surveillance
    Censorship (and resistance)
    Digital Rights Management Ethics
    Internet of Things
    Consumer applications critical infrastructure and key resources

Information and Data Security

    Access control
    Information systems acquisition, development and maintenance
    Organizational security
    Human-oriented security
    Data-centric security
    Security by design
    Intrusion detection methods
    Biometric-based security
    Physiological-based schemes
    Behavioural-based schemes
    Trust Management
    Database security systems
    Big data security issues
    Block chain
    Quantum security
    AI security
    Physical layer security

Communication Security

    Cryptography
    Cryptanalysis
    Cryptology
    Authentication
    Security in wired and wireless networks
    Security and privacy assessment for communications
    Denial of service prevention schemes for communication systems
    Penetration testing, intrusion detection, and prevention schemes
    Multimedia application security and privacy analysis and studies
    Security and privacy in mobile communication services
    Smartphone multimedia application

Privacy

    Privacy Engineering
    Privacy by design
    Risk assessment
    Data flow modelling
    Requirements engineering
    Privacy management and processes
    Ontologies and semantics
    Anonymity
    Data Protection Reputation systems
    Data protection in emerging scenarios
    Data access control policies and models
    Applied cryptography for data protection
    Privacy in data processing
    Selective data sharing

The emphasis is on security protocols, approaches and techniques applied to all areas of security and privacy. The journal provides a prominent forum for the R&D community in both academia and industry.

Responding to the highly applied and commercial importance of Security and Privacy R&D, submissions of applied-oriented papers reporting on case studies, test beds, review and tutorial articles and simulation-based studies are encouraged as well as theoretical-based articles.

All submissions to the journal will be peer-reviewed, and accepted manuscripts will be professionally produced to ensure a common style and level of content for the journal. 

Special Issue on AI Model Security and Privacy in AIoT Environments
Submission Date: 2025-02-15

In Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) environments, the collection and analysis of data are crucial for the normal operation of systems. However, this data often encompasses personal privacy, trade secrets, and critical infrastructure security, rendering it a prime target for attackers. Attacks on AIoT systems typically encompass adversarial example attacks, data poisoning, model backdoors, and various other forms, all of which can culminate in system failures, data theft, or manipulation, thus engendering fairness and bias issues in models and posing security threats to systems and users. For example, in the field of financial technology (FinTech), biometric identification technologies such as fingerprint recognition, facial recognition, and even voiceprint recognition are often used at the perception layer to authenticate users. IoT devices transmit user information to AI cores located in the cloud or at the edge for computation in the data analytics layer. If AI models are attacked, it may result in users being unable to complete identity verification smoothly or even allow unauthorized individuals to easily impersonate them and gain access to the system, leading to financial losses and other damages. In some public domains of open information, such as air pollution and water quality monitoring services, AIoT is often utilized as the primary technology. However, some malicious actors may infiltrate the AIoT perception layer and replace genuine collected pollution data with generated false samples. Moreover, they can influence the judgment of AI models by emitting small amounts of gas or liquid, making it difficult for government agencies to prosecute them.  Furthermore, models can be stolen or reverse-engineered, enabling attackers to effortlessly fabricate false systems to deceive users. Faced with numerous threats, the lack of interpretability in native AI poses a significant concern for our generation, which heavily relies on AI. The development and proliferation of AIoT technology offer boundless opportunities but simultaneously introduce new security challenges. Only through continuous research and innovation can effective methods be found to protect the security, reliability, and privacy of AI in AIoT environments. Therefore, this special issue focuses on enhancing the security of AI models within AIoT environments. We invite research contributions focusing on innovative solutions and strategies tailored to address the escalating security challenges associated with AI model vulnerabilities in AIoT environments.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

    Cyber-physical Systems Privacy and Security
    Mechanism to prevent AI model failures and incorrect authentication in AIoT scenarios with biometric recognition requirements.
    Enhancement of model resilience to adversarial samples in AIoT within the public utility sector.
    Design of novel attacks against models in AIoT.
    Identify poison samples in AIoT and prevent data poisoning attacks from causing model learning failures.
    A solution to address the imbalance in model training caused by non-identically and independently distributed (Non-IID) real AIoT data.
    Security challenges of federated learning (FL) in AIoT.
    Design and defense mechanisms against membership inference attacks on models in AIoT.
    Explainability of models in AIoT.

Papers recycled from those accepted at conferences cannot be considered for publication as SI in the journal. However, extended versions of papers accepted at conferences may be submitted to SIs of the journal under the condition that at least 33% new material is incorporated into the journal version. Additionally, these papers must be clearly identified by the authors at the time of submission, and a detailed explanation of the extensions made must be provided in the cover letter accompanying the submission.

Guest Editors:

Han-Chieh Chao (Lead Guest Editor)
Distinguished Chair Professor
Department of Artificial Intelligence
Tamkang University, Taiwan

Hsin-Hung Cho
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering
National Ilan University, Taiwan

Sherali Zeadally
Professor
University of Kentucky, USA

Reza Malekian
Professor
Department of Computer Science and Media Technology
Malmö University, Sweden

Submission Guidelines/Instructions

We welcome the novel, unpublished and state-of-the-art research manuscript submissions which do not remain under consideration in any other journal. Submission to this special issue should be made only on the SPY journal's online manuscript submission portal and in the submission process authors are instructed to select the manuscript type as “Emerging Threats to Security and Privacy and Innovative Countermeasures". Paper submissions must confirm to the layout and format guidelines in the SPY journal. Instructions for Contributors are in: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/24756725/homepage/forauthors.html

Tentative Deadlines:
Submission portal opens: Sep 15, 2024
Deadline for paper submission: Feb 15, 2025
Notification of Decision: June 1, 2025
Tentative Publication Date: Late 2025