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Challenges and Advances of Cybersecurity in Cloud-Sensor Digital Infrastructure
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Challenges and Advances of Cybersecurity in Cloud-Sensor Digital Infrastructure

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Communications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 2576

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Sheng Wen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Science, Computing and Emerging Technologies, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia
Interests: cybersecurity and privacy; distributed computing and systems software; data management and science
Dr. Xiaogang Zhu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, Adalaide University, North Terrace, SA 5001, Australia
Interests: software and system security; networking security

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The rapid integration of cloud computing and sensor technologies is transforming digital infrastructure across sectors such as healthcare, power grid, transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, and smart cities. This convergence has enabled scalable, real-time, and intelligent systems driven by vast volumes of data collected from heterogeneous sensor networks and processed via powerful cloud platforms. However, this evolution also introduces complex cybersecurity challenges, including data integrity threats, unauthorized access, privacy leakage, malware propagation, and the vulnerability of distributed edge nodes.

This Special Issue of Sensors invites high-quality contributions that explore emerging security challenges, cutting-edge defense mechanisms, and novel architectures for securing cloud-sensor infrastructures. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, secure communication protocols, intrusion detection systems, threat modeling, trusted data aggregation, federated learning security, and blockchain-based solutions for distributed sensing environments. We welcome research articles, surveys, and case studies that address both theoretical foundations and practical implementations, particularly those with interdisciplinary insights or industrial relevance.

Through this Special Issue, we aim to foster dialogue and collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to advance the state of cybersecurity in next-generation digital infrastructures built on cloud and sensor technologies.

Prof. Dr. Sheng Wen
Dr. Xiaogang Zhu
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. Sensors 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 2600 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.

Keywords

  • smart city security
  • healthcare cybersecurity
  • industrial IoT security
  • critical infrastructure protection
  • smart grid cybersecurity
  • autonomous vehicle security
  • smart home security
  • agricultural sensor network protection
  • environmental monitoring security
  • remote patient monitoring security
  • cybersecurity in digital twins
  • surveillance and perimeter sensor security
  • wearable device security
  • transportation system cybersecurity
  • energy system cyber-resilience
  • cybersecurity in supply chain monitoring
  • disaster response sensor network security
  • building automation system security
  • security in water and utility systems
  • mission-critical sensor system protection

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 2335 KB  
Article
Towards Secure Embodied Communication Management in AI Era: Reputation-Guided Agent Message Exchange
by Jiangtao Mu, Li Wan, Zehui Dong, Yong Wei and Zhiwei Xu
Sensors 2026, 26(9), 2853; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26092853 - 2 May 2026
Viewed by 1280
Abstract
For large-scale embedded sensor-actuator networks, such as robotic swarms deployed over vast areas and other embedded intelligent devices, end-to-end message exchange is often impossible due to their limited communication range, power constraints, and device mobility. Devices, thus, rely on multi-hop relaying, exposing them [...] Read more.
For large-scale embedded sensor-actuator networks, such as robotic swarms deployed over vast areas and other embedded intelligent devices, end-to-end message exchange is often impossible due to their limited communication range, power constraints, and device mobility. Devices, thus, rely on multi-hop relaying, exposing them to Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks where compromised relays tamper with, forge, or inject false messages. The existing countermeasures, including end-to-end encryption or Byzantine consensus, involve high overhead while requiring global coordination and, thus, renders them impractical for time-sensitive message exchange in embedded intelligence. Security management on communication among embodied devices is highly desired. To address this challenge, we propose Reputation-Guided Dynamic Relay Selection (RDRS), a lightweight, distributed countermeasure against MitM attacks that leverages interactive feedback to evaluate reputation of embedded devices. Specifically, each device maintains reputation scores updated via recent interaction success rates with decay factors to counter dynamic adversaries. During exchanging messages, embedded devices select next-hop neighbors weighted by reputation scores, effectively bypassing malicious devices without explicit detection or in-path verification. Comprehensive simulations in embedded sensor-actuator networks demonstrate that RDRS reduces tampering success rate (TSR) by 80–95% compared to the baselines, martians request satisfaction rate (RSR) above 79% even at 40% malicious nodes, and achieves lower delay 64% with comparable overhead. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenges and Advances of Cybersecurity in Cloud-Sensor Digital Infrastructure)
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23 pages, 2363 KB  
Article
Crowdsourcing Framework for Security Testing and Verification of Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems
by Zhenyu Li, Yong Ding, Ruwen Zhao, Shuo Wang and Jun Li
Sensors 2026, 26(1), 79; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26010079 - 22 Dec 2025
Viewed by 871
Abstract
With the widespread deployment of Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS), their inherent vulnerabilities have increasingly exposed them to sophisticated cybersecurity threats. Although existing protective mechanisms can block attacks at runtime, the risk of defense failure remains. To proactively evaluate and harden ICPS security, we [...] Read more.
With the widespread deployment of Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS), their inherent vulnerabilities have increasingly exposed them to sophisticated cybersecurity threats. Although existing protective mechanisms can block attacks at runtime, the risk of defense failure remains. To proactively evaluate and harden ICPS security, we design a distributed crowdsourced testing platform tailored to the four-layer cloud ICPS architecture—spanning the workshop, factory, enterprise, and external network layers. Building on this architecture, we develop a Distributed Input–Output Testing and Verification Framework (DIOTVF) that models ICPS as systems with spatially separated injection and observation points, and supports controllable communication delays and multithreaded parallel execution. The framework incorporates a dynamic test–task management model, an asynchronous concurrent testing mechanism, and an optional LLM-assisted thread controller, enabling efficient scheduling of large testing workloads under asynchronous network conditions. We implement the proposed framework in a prototype platform and deploy it on a virtualized ICPS testbed with configurable delay characteristics. Through a series of experimental validations, we demonstrate that the proposed framework can improve testing and verification speed by approximately 2.6 times compared to Apache JMeter. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenges and Advances of Cybersecurity in Cloud-Sensor Digital Infrastructure)
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