Next-Generation Cyber Security: AI-Driven, Resilient, and Trustworthy Systems

Dear Colleagues,

The rapid evolution of digital infrastructures, artificial intelligence, and interconnected systems is fundamentally reshaping the landscape of cyber security. Traditional protection mechanisms are increasingly insufficient against sophisticated, large-scale, and AI-empowered attacks. The Special Issue “Next-Generation Cyber Security” aims to explore emerging theories, technologies, and practices that can safeguard cyberspace in the era of intelligent, open, and highly dynamic environments. Next-generation cyber security is characterized by the deep integration of artificial intelligence, data analytics, and autonomous defense mechanisms. AI-driven systems are now widely used for threat detection, vulnerability discovery, malware analysis, and security orchestration. However, these technologies also introduce new risks, including adversarial attacks on learning models, data poisoning, privacy leakage, and the misuse of large language models and autonomous agents. Building trustworthy, robust, and explainable AI has therefore become a core challenge for future cyber defense.

This Special Issue seeks original contributions that address both the opportunities and risks brought by intelligent technologies to cyber security. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: AI-powered attack and defense; adversarial machine learning; large model and multi-agent system security; privacy-preserving computing; secure data governance; zero-trust architecture; software and hardware security; and intelligent risk assessment across the full lifecycle of AI systems. We particularly welcome interdisciplinary studies that combine cyber security with trustworthy AI, formal verification, human-centric security, and real-world security applications. The objective of this Special Issue is to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners to present innovative methodologies, practical systems, and empirical studies that advance the state of the art in next-generation cyber security. By bringing together perspectives from academia, industry, and government, we aim to promote resilient and proactive defense capabilities against emerging cyber threats. Contributions that include open datasets, reproducible experiments, and deployable solutions are highly encouraged. In an era where cyberspace is deeply intertwined with national security, economic stability, and social trust, developing intelligent yet dependable security technologies is of paramount importance. We invite the community to join this Special Issue to shape the future of secure and trustworthy cyberspace.

Dr. Qian Li
Dr. Qin Jiang
Guest Editors

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• next-generation cyber security
• trustworthy artificial intelligence
• AI security and privacy
• adversarial machine learning
• intelligent threat detection
• autonomous defense systems
• zero-trust security
• AI risk assessment and governance