Secure IoT: Cryptographic Solutions for Sensor Networks
A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Internet of Things".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 March 2026 | Viewed by 7
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem continues to expand at an unprecedented scale, integrating billions of sensor nodes into critical infrastructures, healthcare systems, industrial automation, transportation, and environmental monitoring. While these sensors deliver real-time intelligence, their pervasive deployment in open and often adversarial environments exposes them to severe security and privacy risks. Traditional cryptographic mechanisms, designed for resource-rich platforms, remain impractical for highly constrained devices with limited computational power, memory, and energy budgets.
To address these challenges, researchers are advancing lightweight and energy-aware cryptographic schemes, post-quantum algorithms, and hardware-assisted primitives that can secure data confidentiality, integrity, and authentication without overwhelming device resources. Furthermore, contemporary paradigms such as blockchain-enabled trust management, federated learning for anomaly detection, and privacy-preserving protocols are reshaping how sensor networks achieve resilience against evolving threats, including ransomware, supply chain attacks, and quantum adversaries.
This Special Issue will bring together state-of-the-art research on cryptographic innovations tailored for IoT sensor networks, with emphasis on efficiency, scalability, interoperability, and long-term security. This directly aligns with the scope of Sensors, which promotes advances in sensor technologies, architectures, and applications that underpin secure and trustworthy intelligent systems.
Dr. Md Akbar Hossain
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- secure IoT
- sensor networks
- lightweight cryptography
- blockchain based trust management
- privacy preserving protocols
- energy efficient encryption
- post quantum security
- key management in IoT
- intrusion and anomaly detection
- federated and edge intelligence for security
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