Dear Colleagues,

Digital transformation experiences continuous progression. Not only does this transformation significantly impact cultural changes and business processes in modern societies, but it also enables and facilitates the development of new ecosystems and business models, such as the establishment of digital currencies or on-demand business models. Fundamental pillars of these transformation processes represent technological advances and new technology branches, e.g., IoT, AI, Cloud and Edge Computing, or Quantum Computing. Besides the promising benefits, these technological advances and new technologies introduce new attack vectors and information security risks. The reasons behind these attack vectors and risks are manifold, with examples including increasing system complexity, inadequate security awareness, a short time to markets, and an increasing number of interdependencies. To overcome the increasing number of attack vectors and information security risks, researchers and practitioners are continuously searching for innovative approaches. Hereby, new cryptographic approaches have been proven to play a central role. For instance, over the last few years, practical cryptographic schemes that address the risks of quantum computing for existing cryptographic schemes have been developed and are currently in the process of standardization. Modern cryptography can go far beyond this: in fact, approaches such as homomorphic encryption or secure multiparty computation have been proven to have a significant real world impact, as seen when used in applications such as electronic voting, digital healthcare, or digital finance. However, the innovation regarding approaches that address new attack vectors and information security risks is not only restricted to the field of cryptography. Particularly in the focus field of AI and machine learning, the need for new information security approaches has becine increasingly pressing within the last decade. This Special Issue strives to address security challenges, i.e., new attack vectors and information security risks, introduced by cultural, technological, organizational, and policy changes. Solutions to these challenges include the development of new security and cryptographic approaches, the evaluation of information security awareness measures, the evolution of information security management systems and processes, and the study of regulations and standardization.

Dr. Stephan Neumann
Dr. Jurlind Budurushi
Dr. Malika Bendechache
Guest Editors

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