Dear Colleagues,

Security is an integral component of all systems. Achieving security in a distributed system environment is an arduous task. The major challenge for any system designer is that the system must be efficient and secure. As the size of the system increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain efficiency without compromising security, and vice versa. The threats that a distributed system can face are mostly security threats, and the other security challenges are sharing and storing data in the distributed system. The blockchain, federated learning technology, enables secure data storage and exchanges in a distributed system. A blockchain is an excellent tool for securing and keeping data private by encrypting it and storing it across different machines that are difficult to hack. Federated learning is another option that allows systems to learn and grow together safely in an environment where researchers can work independently without compromising one another’s work. Healthcare, industrial, and social network applications are deployed on distributed systems. The deployed application must be secure and safe for data exchange.

The primary goals of this Special Issue are to discuss how blockchain, federated learning, and trustworthy AI are used to secure and maintain privacy in distributed systems in the modern era, and to provide a forum for experts to discuss their most recent cutting-edge research, opinions, and ideas on potential future directions in this field.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Security and privacy in cyber-physical distributed systems;
• The function of trust management in the security of distributed systems;
• Security and privacy of distributed online social networks;
• Implementing security protocols for distributed healthcare systems;
• Distributed systems privacy and security using blockchain;
• Trustworthy distributed intelligence for smart factories;
• Distributed systems data security for Industrial IoT;
• Security architecture for distributed digital systems;
• Distributed security network functions against botnet attacks in software-defined networks;
• Federated learning models for distributed system security;
• Challenges in cloud computing security and solutions;
• Threats, issues, and remedies for the distributed IoT network.

Dr. S. Manimurugan
Dr. P. Karthikeyan
Prof. Dr. Subramaniam Ganesan
Guest Editors

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• blockchain
• deep learning
• trustworthy AI
• cloud security
• image processing