Introduction to the Special Section on Security and Privacy of Smart Network Systems

The papers in this special section focus on security and privacy of smart network systems. The explosion in the availability of smart devices and the extensive development of network infrastructure bring a new paradigm, called Smart Network Systems. Rich information can be transferred among the connected devices in Smart Network Systems, which enable a large variety of real-world applications, such as smart cities, smart grid, internet of vehicles, and intelligent medication. Even though Smart Network Systems have enormous values in terms of tackling the computational and communicational overheads and resource management problems, there are still many challenging issues that hinder their further developments. Specifically, distributed computing protocols play a significant role in Smart Network Systems where a large number of smart devices are geographically distributed and logically scattered. However, such distributed techniques are vulnerable to malicious codes and false data injections, internal and/or external attacks, and private information disclosures. Furthermore, designing secure and privacy-preserving protocols in Smart Network Systems is also challenging, since extra communicational and computational costs can be created due to encryption/decryption and the network utility may be degraded under certain security and privacy protection strategies.