Special Issue on Trends in Cybersecurity
Journal of Information Security and Applications, Elsevier
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-information-security-and-applications

Computer networks are intrinsically susceptible to cyberattacks. Vulnerabilities are pervasive, and a single penetration may trigger a cascading failure. Even the strongest preventive controls may be defeated by the unprecedented speed, magnitude, intensity, and sophistication of modern cyberattacks facilitated by rapid technological change and global interconnectivity. The once siloed systems, including gas, water, electricity, telecommunications, health, manufacturing, and transportation, are nowadays interlinked to form a system-of-systems, potentially exposing a tremendous attack surface. Spurred by the mushrooming of IoT devices and the imminent global rollout of 5G cellular networks, this umbrella of less or more tightly integrated systems is getting prodigious and convoluted. In this context, nowadays, cybersecurity is a prolonged, unconventional warfare on a multidimensional, multilayered, and asymmetric battlescape. After all, cyberattacks on critical infrastructures and cyber influencing are powerful weapons in the arsenal of hybrid threats, and virtually all operations in modern society are less or more vulnerable to cyber reconnaissance or cyberattacks. Asymmetries in cybersecurity and cyberwarfare are evident:

- The stakes are much elevated, and the terrain is enormous, boundless, highly diversified, and multilayered. No flags, uniforms, and mutually established rules of engagement exist.
- Cyberattack methods are becoming more and more varied, stealthier, uneven, unorthodox, and persistent. Cybercriminals seek to attain the first mover advantage by exploiting the feeblest link, either human or technical, and concentrate on bypassing, undermining, or sabotaging the victim’s strengths. This way, they maximize the inflicted damage, including shock, confusion, disorder, and misdirection. They even crowdsource their attacks.
- The available attack tools are becoming more ubiquitous, low-cost, and “user-friendly”.
- The impacts are more dire, if not catastrophic often due to the ripple-effect, and the involved cyber threat actors are numerous and diverse in terms of skill level, capacity, motivation, and goals.
- And of course, cybersecurity is both a technical and a socioeconomic problem, and thus cannot be solved by technical means alone. It requires the proper integration of humans, procedures, and technology to safeguard pivotal cyberassets.

The goal of this special issue is to spur research and fuel the dissemination of the latest technologies, solutions, case studies, and prototypes regarding all aspects of cybersecurity, either human or technology centered. Only high-quality articles describing previously unpublished, original, state-of-the-art research, and not currently under review by a conference or journal will be considered. Authors of excellent conference papers may also submit extended and significantly revised versions of their manuscripts to be considered for publication. Such revised versions should explicitly cite the conference paper and clearly pinpoint the additional contributions and changes vis-à-vis the conference paper. Overall, such a submission should contain at least 50% new material, including extensions to the original proposal and additional results.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

- Unconventional cybersecurity, including moving target defense, cyber deception, and side-channel analysis.
- Anti-democracy attacks and cyber influencing, including fake news, cyber-meddling, astroturfing, and infodemic campaigns.
- Advanced persistent threats
- Social engineering and human hacking
- Unconventional penetration testing tactics and techniques
- Game theory in aid of cybersecurity
- Malware, including ransomware
- Adversarial machine learning, including deepfake
- Advances in critical infrastructure security
- Usable security and human-centric cybersecurity solutions
- Internet measurements in aid of security
- Botnets, including social bots
- Cyber analytics and cyber threat intelligence
- Cyber-physical system security
- Cybersecurity metrics and assessment
- Cryptography for cybersecurity
- Cyber risk management
- Interdisciplinary research topics on cybersecurity

Manuscript Submission Information

Authors should prepare their manuscript according to the guide for authors described at the journal site (http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-information-security-and-applications). All papers deemed suitable to be sent for peer review will be peer-reviewed by at least two independent reviewers. Authors should select “CyberSecTrends” when they reach the “Article Type” step in the submission process. Once a manuscript is accepted, it will go into production, and will be simultaneously published in the current regular issue and pulled into the online Special Issue. Articles from this Special Issue will appear in different regular issues of the journal, though they will be clearly marked and branded as Special Issue articles.

Important Dates

Submission deadline: Nov. 9, 2020
First Round of Reviews: Jan. 11, 2021
Revised Manuscript: Feb. 15, 2021
Second Round of Reviews: March 17, 2021
Camera-Ready: April 12, 2021

Guest Editors

Dr. Georgios Kambourakis, University of the Aegean, Greece
Dr. Weizhi Meng, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
Dr. Dimitrios Damopoulos, University of South Alabama, USA
Dr. Susanne Wetzel, Stevens Institute of Technology, USA
Dr. Wenjuan Li, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR