AI for Cybersecurity and Emerging Technologies for Secure Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Cybersecurity continues to evolve as digital systems expand across distributed, data-intensive, and decentralized infrastructures. The growing dependence on cloud computing, IoT, and blockchain-based applications calls for security frameworks that are not only intelligent, explainable, and verifiable but also grounded in rigorous theoretical foundations. This Special Issue focuses on both theoretical advancements and applied innovations in artificial intelligence and emerging security technologies that enhance the protection, resilience, and transparency of modern computing environments. The issue recognizes that traditional, rule-based defenses must give way to autonomous, adaptive, and data-driven architectures capable of addressing complex and persistent cyber threats.

This Special Issue aims to feature AI-assisted, blockchain-enabled, and mathematically verifiable approaches that improve system reliability, trust, and data assurance. Theoretical contributions may address formal security modeling, cryptographic proofs, explainable learning models, and algorithmic verification, while applied studies may explore machine learning–based intrusion detection, blockchain and smart contract security, privacy-preserving computation, and decentralized trust management. The collection also welcomes emerging research on the responsible use of generative AI for security applications, including its role in automated threat simulation, vulnerability analysis, and synthetic data generation for training resilient defense models. Submissions demonstrating measurable improvements in risk prediction, access control, incident response, or secure data exchange are highly encouraged.

Dr. Syed Badruddoja
Dr. Kritagya Upadhyay
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.