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Search Results (2,013)

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50 pages, 2682 KB  
Systematic Review
Transforming Beekeeping Through Technology: A Systematic Review of Precision Beekeeping
by Ashan Milinda Bandara Ratnayake, Hazwani Suhaimi and Pg Emeroylariffion Abas
Sci 2026, 8(4), 87; https://doi.org/10.3390/sci8040087 - 9 Apr 2026
Abstract
Beekeeping is a profitable and mind-relaxing practice; however, monitoring beehives poses significant challenges, such as consuming time and potentially disturbing hive equilibrium, which may lead to colony collapse. Developing precision beekeeping (PB) systems is crucial to assist beekeepers in decision-making, automate redundant hive [...] Read more.
Beekeeping is a profitable and mind-relaxing practice; however, monitoring beehives poses significant challenges, such as consuming time and potentially disturbing hive equilibrium, which may lead to colony collapse. Developing precision beekeeping (PB) systems is crucial to assist beekeepers in decision-making, automate redundant hive maintenance, and enhance the security and comfort of bee life. This review systematically explores research on PB systems, based on a keyword-driven search of Scopus and Web of Science databases, yielding 46 relevant publications. The analysis highlights a notable increase in research activity in the field since 2016. The integration of advanced technologies, including machine learning, cloud computing, IoT, and scenario-based communication methods, has proven instrumental in predicting hive states such as queen status, enemy attacks, readiness for harvest, swarming events, and population decline. Commonly measured parameters include hive weight, temperature, and relative humidity, with various sensors employed to ensure precision while minimizing bee disturbance. Additionally, bee traffic monitoring has emerged as a critical approach to assessing hive health. Most studies focus on honeybees rather than stingless bees and, in the context of enemy identification, Varroa destructor is the primary target. This review underscores the potential of novel technologies to revolutionize apiculture and enhance hive management practices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feature Papers—Multidisciplinary Sciences 2025)
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31 pages, 2475 KB  
Article
Fuzzy-Logic Workload Orchestration Framework for Smart Campuses in Edge-Cloud System Architecture
by Abdullah Fawaz Aljulayfi
Electronics 2026, 15(8), 1556; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15081556 - 8 Apr 2026
Abstract
Transforming a conventional university campus into a smart campus by leveraging modern technologies aims to deliver university services efficiently, effectively, and at low cost. Modern technologies enhance campus life by providing services, such as smart classrooms and campus security, on demand. Seamless service [...] Read more.
Transforming a conventional university campus into a smart campus by leveraging modern technologies aims to deliver university services efficiently, effectively, and at low cost. Modern technologies enhance campus life by providing services, such as smart classrooms and campus security, on demand. Seamless service delivery requires reliable and efficient access to the services that take into consideration the dynamic contextual attributes related to, e.g., end-device mobility, latency sensitivity, and resource constraints. University staff, students, and visitors frequently submit different types of service requests on the move, which requires a robust orchestration framework capable of managing these requests across edge-cloud environments. The orchestration framework needs to intelligently distribute the workload, taking into consideration the latency sensitivity requirements and contextual conditions, including resource constraints. Therefore, a fuzzy-logic orchestration framework for smart-campus environments in edge-cloud architecture is proposed. The framework incorporates key factors, including user speed, resource utilization, and request delay sensitivity, in the decision-making process to satisfy both service consumers and service providers. It prioritizes latency-sensitive requests while simultaneously enhancing resource utilization efficiency. Simulation-based experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework compared with benchmark approaches in orchestrating incoming workloads under several user and contextual conditions. Additionally, the results show that the proposed framework improves the execution rate by 30% compared to benchmark models and achieves more than double resource utilization efficiency. Full article
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30 pages, 2308 KB  
Article
Early Detection of Virtual Machine Failures in Cloud Computing Using Quantum-Enhanced Support Vector Machine
by Bhargavi Krishnamurthy, Saikat Das and Sajjan G. Shiva
Mathematics 2026, 14(7), 1229; https://doi.org/10.3390/math14071229 - 7 Apr 2026
Abstract
Cloud computing is one of the essential computing platforms for modern enterprises. A total of 84 percent of large businesses use cloud computing services in 2025 to enable remote working and higher flexibility of operation with reduction in the cost of operation. Cloud [...] Read more.
Cloud computing is one of the essential computing platforms for modern enterprises. A total of 84 percent of large businesses use cloud computing services in 2025 to enable remote working and higher flexibility of operation with reduction in the cost of operation. Cloud environments are dynamic and multitenant, often demanding high computational resources for real-time processing. However, the cloud system’s behavior is subjected to various kinds of anomalies in which patterns of data deviate from the normal traffic. The varieties of anomalies that exist are performance anomalies, security anomalies, resource anomalies, and network anomalies. These anomalies disrupt the normal operation of cloud systems by increasing the latency, reducing throughput, frequently violating service level agreements (SLAs), and experiencing the failure of virtual machines. Among all anomalies, virtual machine failures are one of the potential anomalies in which the normal operation of the virtual machine is interrupted, resulting in the degradation of services. Virtual machine failure happens because of resource exhaustion, malware access, packet loss, Distributed Denial of Service attacks, etc. Hence, there is a need to detect the chances of virtual machine failures and prevent it through proactive measures. Traditional machine learning techniques often struggle with high-dimensional data and nonlinear correlations, ending up with poor real-time adaptation. Hence, quantum machine learning is found to be a promising solution which effectively deals with combinatorially complex and high-dimensional data. In this paper, a novel quantum-enhanced support vector machine (QSVM) is designed as an optimized binary classifier which combines the principles of both quantum computing and support vector machine. It encodes the classical data into quantum states. Feature mapping is performed to transform the data into the high-dimensional form of Hilbert space. Quantum kernel evaluation is performed to evaluate similarities. Through effective optimization, optimal hyperplanes are designed to detect the anomalous behavior of virtual machines. This results in the exponential speed-up of operation and prevents the local minima through entanglement and superposition operation. The performance of the proposed QSVM is analyzed using the QuCloudSim 1.0 simulator and further validated using expected value analysis methodology. Full article
6 pages, 892 KB  
Proceeding Paper
Applying Model Context Protocol for Offline Small Language Models in Industrial Data Management
by Nian-Ze Hu, You-Xin Lin, Hao-Lun Huang, Po-Han Lu, Chih-Chen Lin, Yu-Tzu Hung, Sing-Cih Jhang and Pei-Yu Chou
Eng. Proc. 2026, 134(1), 31; https://doi.org/10.3390/engproc2026134031 - 7 Apr 2026
Viewed by 35
Abstract
In recent years, Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong capabilities in contextual reasoning and knowledge retrieval. However, their application in industrial domains is limited by concerns regarding data security, reliance on cloud infrastructure, and high operational costs. To address these challenges, this [...] Read more.
In recent years, Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong capabilities in contextual reasoning and knowledge retrieval. However, their application in industrial domains is limited by concerns regarding data security, reliance on cloud infrastructure, and high operational costs. To address these challenges, this study proposes the use of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as a middleware framework that enables the deployment of offline-operable Small Language Models (SLMs) for industrial data processing. MCP facilitates structured interaction between SLMs and external resources (e.g., databases, APIs, and processors), allowing secure and controlled data access without exposing proprietary systems. As illustrated in the proposed framework, user input is first processed by the SLM (Qwen-7B) for intent determination. When external data is required, MCP coordinates the invocation of relevant resources and integrates the returned results into the model. The SLM then generates the final response. This approach enables SLMs to perform local computation for contextual analysis and decision support while maintaining low computational requirements and full data locality. The proposed system eliminates dependence on cloud-based LLM services and enhances security and cost efficiency. Experimental results demonstrate that the MCP-based architecture provides a practical and effective solution for deploying intelligent assistants in industrial environments without relying on large-scale external AI services. Full article
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43 pages, 1881 KB  
Article
Cognitive ZTNA: A Neuro-Symbolic AI Approach for Adaptive and Explainable Zero Trust Access Control
by Ahmed Alzahrani
Mathematics 2026, 14(7), 1211; https://doi.org/10.3390/math14071211 - 3 Apr 2026
Viewed by 164
Abstract
Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) has emerged as a fundamental paradigm for securing cloud-native and distributed computing environments. However, existing ZTNA implementations remain largely limited by static policy enforcement and opaque machine-learning-based anomaly detection mechanisms, which often lack contextual adaptability, policy awareness, and [...] Read more.
Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) has emerged as a fundamental paradigm for securing cloud-native and distributed computing environments. However, existing ZTNA implementations remain largely limited by static policy enforcement and opaque machine-learning-based anomaly detection mechanisms, which often lack contextual adaptability, policy awareness, and interpretable decision-making capabilities. These limitations create significant challenges in dynamic multi-cloud environments where access behavior continuously evolves and security decisions must be both accurate and explainable. To address these challenges, this study proposes Cognitive ZTNA framework, a unified neuro-symbolic trust enforcement framework that integrates transformer-based behavioral trust modeling with ontology-guided symbolic reasoning. The proposed architecture enables continuous trust evaluation by combining behavioral access patterns with explicit policy semantics through a hybrid trust fusion mechanism. This design allows the system to capture long-range behavioral dependencies while maintaining policy-compliant and interpretable access control decisions. The framework is evaluated using the CloudZT-Bench-2025 dataset, comprising 4.2 million cross-platform access events derived from enterprise security telemetry, AWS CloudTrail logs, and simulated adversarial scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate that Cognitive ZTNA achieves Precision = 0.96, Recall = 0.93, and F1-score = 0.95, significantly outperforming rule-based and machine-learning baselines while reducing the false positive rate to 0.03. In addition, the system maintains real-time feasibility with an average decision latency of 24 ms and explanation latency below 5 ms, while achieving 92% analyst-rated explanation sufficiency. These findings demonstrate that integrating behavioral intelligence with symbolic policy reasoning enables adaptive, interpretable, and policy-aware Zero Trust enforcement. The proposed framework therefore provides a practical foundation for next-generation ZTNA systems capable of supporting secure, transparent, and context-aware access control in modern cloud environments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Advances in Network Security and Data Privacy)
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45 pages, 3695 KB  
Article
Towards a Reference Architecture for Machine Learning Operations
by Miguel Ángel Mateo-Casalí, Andrés Boza and Francisco Fraile
Computers 2026, 15(4), 218; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers15040218 - 1 Apr 2026
Viewed by 328
Abstract
Industrial organisations increasingly rely on machine learning (ML) to improve quality, maintenance, and planning in Industry 4.0/5.0 ecosystems. However, turning experimental models into reliable services on the production floor remains complex due to the heterogeneity of operational technologies (OTs) and information technologies (ITs), [...] Read more.
Industrial organisations increasingly rely on machine learning (ML) to improve quality, maintenance, and planning in Industry 4.0/5.0 ecosystems. However, turning experimental models into reliable services on the production floor remains complex due to the heterogeneity of operational technologies (OTs) and information technologies (ITs), including implementation constraints, latency in edge-fog-cloud scenarios, governance requirements, and continuous performance degradation caused by data drift. Although Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) provides lifecycle practices for deployment, monitoring, and retraining, the evidence is fragmented across tool-centric descriptions, case-specific pipelines, and conceptual architectures, offering limited guidance on which industrial constraints should inform architectural decisions and how to evaluate solutions. This work addresses that gap through a PRISMA-guided systematic review of 49 studies on industrial MLOps (with the search and screening primarily targeting Industry 4.0/IIoT operationalisation contexts, as reflected in the search strategy and corpus) and an evidence-based synthesis of principles, challenges, lifecycle practices, and enabling technologies. From this synthesis, industrial requirements are derived that encompass OT/IT integration, edge-fog-cloud orchestration, security and traceability, and observability-based lifecycle control. On this basis, a reference architecture is proposed that maps these requirements to functional layers, data and control flows, and verifiable responsibilities. To support reproducibility and practical inspectability, the article also presents an open-source architectural instantiation aligned with the proposed decomposition. Finally, the evaluation is illustrated through a predictive maintenance use case (tool breakage) in a single CNC machining cell, where the objective is to demonstrate end-to-end feasibility under realistic operational constraints rather than cross-scenario superiority or broad industrial generalisability. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Machine Learning: Innovation, Implementation, and Impact)
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41 pages, 4416 KB  
Article
A Novel Approach to Sybil Attack Detection in VANETs Using Verifiable Delay Functions and Hierarchical Fog-Cloud Architecture
by Habiba Hadri, Mourad Ouadou and Khalid Minaoui
J. Cybersecur. Priv. 2026, 6(2), 59; https://doi.org/10.3390/jcp6020059 - 1 Apr 2026
Viewed by 307
Abstract
Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) have become the foundation for the implementation of intelligent transportation systems and new vistas for road safety and traffic efficiency. However, these networks are still susceptible to Sybil attacks, a form of attack that requires malicious entities to [...] Read more.
Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) have become the foundation for the implementation of intelligent transportation systems and new vistas for road safety and traffic efficiency. However, these networks are still susceptible to Sybil attacks, a form of attack that requires malicious entities to create a series of fake identities in order to have an out-of-proportion influence. The present paper puts forth a new Sybil attack detection framework that combines Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) in synergistic cooperation with a hierarchical fog-cloud computing structure. Our method does not rely on any additional properties of VDFs but uses them to prove uniqueness computationally, deploying purposefully placed fog nodes for effective localized detection. We mathematically formulate a multi-layered detection algorithm that processes interactions between vehicles on two fog (and cloud) layers to produce suspicion scores using spatiotemporal consistency and VDF challenge-response patterns. Security analysis proves the system’s ability to resist a range of Sybil attack variants with performance evaluation outperforming at detection above 97.8% and false positives below 2.3%. The incorporation of machine learning techniques also extends detection capabilities, and our hybrid VDF-ML method proves better adaptation to the changing attack patterns. Details of implementation and detailed simulations in various traffic situations prove the feasibility and efficiency of our proposed solution to set a new level playing ground for secure VANET communications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intrusion/Malware Detection and Prevention in Networks—2nd Edition)
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35 pages, 11805 KB  
Article
MRTS-Boosting: A Quality-Aware Multivariate Time Series Classification Framework for Robust Rice Detection Under Cloud Contamination
by Bayu Suseno, Guilhem Brunel, Hari Wijayanto, Kusman Sadik, Farit Mochamad Afendi and Bruno Tisseyre
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(7), 1025; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18071025 - 29 Mar 2026
Viewed by 307
Abstract
Accurate rice detection is essential for food security, sustainable agriculture, and environmental monitoring. Satellite time series observations provide scalable capabilities for rice detection; however, their application in tropical regions is challenged by persistent cloud contamination, asynchronous crop development cycles, and temporal misalignment among [...] Read more.
Accurate rice detection is essential for food security, sustainable agriculture, and environmental monitoring. Satellite time series observations provide scalable capabilities for rice detection; however, their application in tropical regions is challenged by persistent cloud contamination, asynchronous crop development cycles, and temporal misalignment among multisensor observations, which reduce classification reliability. This study introduces Multivariate Robust Time Series Boosting (MRTS-Boosting), a quality-aware framework for multivariate time series classification (TSC) designed to improve robustness under noisy and irregular observational conditions. The framework integrates quality-weighted feature construction, joint extraction of full-series and interval-based temporal features, and a flexible multivariate formulation that accommodates heterogeneous satellite inputs without strict temporal alignment. Performance was evaluated using synthetic datasets with controlled cloud contamination, 103 benchmark datasets from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) TSC Archive, and 3261 real-world rice field observations from Indonesia. Comparisons were conducted against representative whole-series, interval-based, shapelet-based, kernel-based, and ensemble classifiers. MRTS-Boosting achieved up to 87% accuracy under severe cloud contamination, an average rank of 2.7 on noise-augmented UCR datasets, and 93% accuracy with Cohen’s kappa of 0.76 for Indonesian rice detection, while maintaining moderate computational cost. These results demonstrate that MRTS-Boosting provides a robust, scalable, and computationally efficient framework for satellite-based rice detection. The framework remains competitive in univariate settings while benefiting from multisensor integration, indicating that performance gains arise from both methodological design and the effective use of heterogeneous data. MRTS-Boosting is therefore well-suited for precision agriculture applications under challenging observational conditions. Full article
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29 pages, 931 KB  
Article
Stateful Order-Preserving Encryption for Secure Cloud Databases
by Nam-Su Jho and Taek-Young Youn
Electronics 2026, 15(7), 1412; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15071412 - 28 Mar 2026
Viewed by 199
Abstract
We propose stateful order-preserving encryption (SOPE), a novel framework designed to realize human-centric data security and privacy, the fundamental values of the Fifth Industrial Revolution. Conventional order-preserving encryption supports efficient queries in cloud databases but fundamentally leaks plaintext distributions, leaving data vulnerable to [...] Read more.
We propose stateful order-preserving encryption (SOPE), a novel framework designed to realize human-centric data security and privacy, the fundamental values of the Fifth Industrial Revolution. Conventional order-preserving encryption supports efficient queries in cloud databases but fundamentally leaks plaintext distributions, leaving data vulnerable to inference attacks. To mitigate this vulnerability while maintaining query efficiency, SOPE introduces a partition-based dynamic density adjustment mechanism under an honest-but-curious threat model. This mechanism offsets density imbalances between partitions in real time by inserting decoy ciphertexts, thereby limiting the leakage scope to the order of data while obscuring frequency information. Our analysis and empirical evaluations demonstrate that SOPE’s ciphertexts consistently approach a uniform distribution by adaptively compensating for the underlying plaintext distribution through decoy insertion. While the continuous insertion of decoy ciphertexts inevitably incurs additional storage overhead (controlled by a tunable parameter λ), our evaluations demonstrate practical performance. By striking an optimal balance between efficiency and human privacy rights, SOPE provides a trustworthy infrastructure for secure data utilization. Full article
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22 pages, 6161 KB  
Article
Remote Sensing Data-Based Modelling for Analyzing Green Tide Proliferation Drivers in the Yellow Sea
by Jing Yang, Enye He, Xuanliang Ji, Qianqiu Guo, Shan Gao and Yuxuan Jiang
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(7), 1014; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18071014 - 28 Mar 2026
Viewed by 302
Abstract
Since 2007, green tides have recurrently occurred in the Yellow Sea during spring and summer, with a massive outbreak recorded in 2021. Given the critical significance of green tide monitoring and prediction for marine ecological security and sustainable development, this study developed a [...] Read more.
Since 2007, green tides have recurrently occurred in the Yellow Sea during spring and summer, with a massive outbreak recorded in 2021. Given the critical significance of green tide monitoring and prediction for marine ecological security and sustainable development, this study developed a satellite remote sensing-validated coupled simulation system for green tide drift and growth, by integrating multi-source satellite remote sensing data and oceanographic reanalysis datasets. Leveraging this system, we systematically analyzed the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and underlying driving mechanisms of both routine green tide processes in 2014–2015 and the extreme 2021 event. Satellite images with low cloud cover and extensive green tide distribution were screened to confirm the accuracy of green tide drift trajectories and distribution ranges for validating the model’s reliability, and the results demonstrated the spatial consistency between simulation results and satellite observations. The validated model was used to track the drift and growth–decline processes of green tides and investigate the underlying cause of high-biomass appearance in 2021. Combined with environmental parameters, our analyses revealed that variations in attachment substrates alter wind resistance coefficients, thereby potentially accelerating the northward drift velocity of green tides. Furthermore, substrate properties may exert a significant regulatory effect on the attachment, germination, and biomass accumulation of Ulva prolifera spores, which could be a leading factor driving the massive green tide outbreak. Full article
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24 pages, 518 KB  
Article
A Secure Authentication Scheme for Hierarchical Federated Learning with Anomaly Detection in IoT-Based Smart Agriculture
by Jihye Choi and Youngho Park
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(7), 3211; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16073211 - 26 Mar 2026
Viewed by 228
Abstract
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted hierarchical federated learning (HFL) has emerged as a promising architecture for Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart agriculture, which enables scalable model training over large and sparse farmlands. In this setting, UAVs act as mobile edge servers, aggregating local updates [...] Read more.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted hierarchical federated learning (HFL) has emerged as a promising architecture for Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart agriculture, which enables scalable model training over large and sparse farmlands. In this setting, UAVs act as mobile edge servers, aggregating local updates from distributed agricultural IoT devices and relaying them to the cloud server. While HFL improves scalability and reduces communication overhead, it still faces critical security threats due to its reliance on public wireless channels and the vulnerability of model aggregation to malicious updates. In this paper, we propose a secure authentication scheme that integrates anomaly detection with elliptic curve cryptography (ECC)-based mutual authentication to protect both the communication and training phases. In the proposed scheme, UAVs authenticate participating clients before receiving their local models, then perform anomaly detection to identify and exclude malicious participants. If a client is found to be malicious, its identity credentials are revoked and broadcast by the cloud server to prevent future participation. The security of the proposed scheme is formally verified using Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, the Real-or-Random (RoR) model, and the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool, along with informal security analysis. The performance evaluation includes comparisons of security features, computation cost, and communication cost with other related schemes, and an experimental assessment of anomaly detection performance. The results demonstrate that our scheme provides strong security guarantees, low overhead, and effective malicious client detection, making it well suited for UAV-assisted HFL in smart agriculture. Full article
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22 pages, 311 KB  
Article
Accelerated Multisecret Sharing Scheme Using Fast Matrix Spectral Factorization
by Selda Çalkavur, Patrick Solé and Lasha Ephremidze
Entropy 2026, 28(4), 369; https://doi.org/10.3390/e28040369 - 25 Mar 2026
Viewed by 461
Abstract
In this paper, we propose a novel multisecret sharing (MSS) scheme that integrates a recently developed exponential-speedup matrix spectral factorization algorithm into the construction of paraunitary matrices over finite fields. By exploiting the block-matrix generalization of the Janashia-Lagvilava method, we significantly enhance the [...] Read more.
In this paper, we propose a novel multisecret sharing (MSS) scheme that integrates a recently developed exponential-speedup matrix spectral factorization algorithm into the construction of paraunitary matrices over finite fields. By exploiting the block-matrix generalization of the Janashia-Lagvilava method, we significantly enhance the efficiency and scalability of the MSS scheme. The proposed method ensures perfect secrecy, collusion resistance, and efficient reconstruction, while enabling practical deployment in large-scale distributed systems such as secure cloud storage, IoT networks, and blockchain authentication. Security and performance analyses demonstrate the superiority of the new approach over existing MSS schemes. Full article
26 pages, 791 KB  
Article
A Kyber-Based Lightweight Cloud-Assisted Authentication Scheme for Medical IoT
by He Yan, Zhenyu Wang, Liuming Lin, Jing Sun and Shuanggen Liu
Sensors 2026, 26(7), 2021; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26072021 - 24 Mar 2026
Viewed by 384
Abstract
The Medical Internet of Things (MIoT) has promoted smart healthcare through the deep integration of wearable devices, wireless communication, and cloud services. However, this framework faces security risks, as attackers may exploit public channels to impersonate legitimate devices or services and steal sensitive [...] Read more.
The Medical Internet of Things (MIoT) has promoted smart healthcare through the deep integration of wearable devices, wireless communication, and cloud services. However, this framework faces security risks, as attackers may exploit public channels to impersonate legitimate devices or services and steal sensitive data. Therefore, establishing authentication between wearable devices and servers prior to data transmission is crucial. Existing schemes suffer from two critical drawbacks: vulnerability to quantum attacks and excessively high communication overhead, highlighting the need for improved solutions. The authors of this paper present a multi-factor identity authentication protocol to achieve post-quantum security and privacy protection. The scheme integrates lattice-based Kyber key encapsulation and a fuzzy commitment mechanism to secure biological templates and enable post-quantum key agreement. Additionally, hash functions and lightweight error correction codes are employed to reduce terminal communication overhead. The security of the scheme is rigorously proved in the Real-or-Random model, and the analysis confirms that the scheme satisfies common security requirements for wireless networks. The proposed scheme is also compared with existing schemes, and the results demonstrate that it achieves a balance between security and overhead. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cyber Security and Privacy in Internet of Things (IoT))
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30 pages, 1345 KB  
Article
HyperShield: An Automated Evaluation Platform for Security and Performance Trade-Offs in Virtual Systems
by Faiz Alam, Mohammed Mubeen Mifthak, Sahil Bhalchandra Purohit, Md Shadab, Gregory T. Byrd and Khaled Harfoush
J. Cybersecur. Priv. 2026, 6(2), 56; https://doi.org/10.3390/jcp6020056 - 24 Mar 2026
Viewed by 341
Abstract
Virtualization is the building block of modern cloud computing infrastructure. However, it remains vulnerable to a range of security threats, including malicious co-located tenants, hypervisor vulnerabilities, and side-channel attacks. These threats are generally mitigated by developing and deploying advanced and complex security solutions [...] Read more.
Virtualization is the building block of modern cloud computing infrastructure. However, it remains vulnerable to a range of security threats, including malicious co-located tenants, hypervisor vulnerabilities, and side-channel attacks. These threats are generally mitigated by developing and deploying advanced and complex security solutions that incur significant performance overhead. Prior work on virtual machines (VMs) and containers has mainly evaluated basic security solutions, such as firewalls, using narrow performance metrics and synthetic models within limited evaluation frameworks. These studies often overlook advanced security modules in both user and kernel space, lack the flexibility to incorporate emerging features, and fail to capture detailed system-level impacts. We address these gaps with HyperShield, an open-source framework for unified security evaluation across VMs and containers that mimics a realistic cloud infrastructure. HyperShield supports advanced security modules in both user and kernel space, providing rich system-level performance metrics for comprehensive evaluation. Our performance evaluation shows that containers generally outperform VMs due to their lower virtualization overhead, achieving a throughput of 9.38 Gb/s compared to 1.98 Gb/s for VMs for our benchmarks. However, VMs’ performance is comparable for kernel-space deployments, as Docker uses the shared kernel space of the Docker bridge, which can result in packet congestion. In latency-sensitive workloads, VM access latency of 14.91 ms is comparable to Docker’s 12.86 ms. In storage benchmarks, FIO, however, VMs outperform Docker due to the overhead of Docker’s layered, copy-on-write file system, whereas VMs leverage optimized virtual block devices with near-native I/O performance. These results highlight performance dependencies on benchmark choice, trade-offs in deploying security workloads between user and kernel space, and the choice of containers and virtual machines as virtualization environments. Therefore, HyperShield provides a comprehensive evaluation toolkit for exploring an optimal security-module deployment strategy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Topic Recent Advances in Security, Privacy, and Trust)
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21 pages, 3438 KB  
Article
IoT-Based Architecture with AI-Ready Analytics for Medical Waste Management: System Design and Pilot Validation
by Shynar Akhmetzhanova, Zhanar Oralbekova, Anuar Bayakhmetov, Ainur Abduvalova, Tamara Yeshmakhanova, Ainagul Berdygulova and Gulnara Toktarkozha
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(6), 3081; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16063081 - 23 Mar 2026
Viewed by 378
Abstract
Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensing can improve traceability, safety, and efficiency of medical waste handling, yet many deployments remain fragmented, lack an end-to-end system architecture, and do not provide the structured data pipelines needed for artificial intelligence (AI) analytics. This paper presents a layered IoT-based [...] Read more.
Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensing can improve traceability, safety, and efficiency of medical waste handling, yet many deployments remain fragmented, lack an end-to-end system architecture, and do not provide the structured data pipelines needed for artificial intelligence (AI) analytics. This paper presents a layered IoT-based system design for medical waste management that integrates: (i) Espressif Systems 32 (ESP32)-based edge devices for fill-level and Global Positioning System (GPS) telemetry; (ii) secure network communication; (iii) a cloud backend for data ingestion, storage, and analytics; and (iv) operator dashboards with event-driven alerting. The architecture extends our prior GPS-enabled tracking and route optimization by adding sensor-driven state monitoring, threshold-based decision support, and a time-series data pipeline designed for future AI-driven predictive analytics. In a 30-day pilot with five containers, the system collected one reading every 15 min (14,400 total readings). The backend demonstrated efficient processing with an average Application Programming Interface (API) response time of 45 ms, sub-50 ms database write latency, and high uptime; alerts were delivered promptly upon threshold violations. Compared with a fixed-schedule baseline, the system enabled condition-based collection scheduling with zero data loss. The proposed design emphasizes modularity, fault tolerance, and integration readiness for hospital information systems, providing a practical blueprint for scalable smart-healthcare waste logistics and a foundation for machine learning-based predictive waste management. Full article
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