ParaDefender: A Scenario-Driven Parallel System for Defending Metaverses

The metaverse, as an instance of cyber–physical–social systems (CPSS) that originates in cyber–physical systems (CPS), features growing complexity, and diversity in terms of functionalities, as well as the exponentially increasing demand in network bandwidth and computational resources, thereby leading to exaggerated security threats. However, compared with the extensive attention received by the metaverse, solutions defending against the threats have not kept pace. A major obstacle to such solutions is virtuality–reality-synthesized threats. Therefore, it is imperative to design new paradigms to defend the metaverse effectively. In this article, we advance a parallel system, dubbed ParaDefender, to defend the metaverse against emerging new threats effectively. Inspired by parallel intelligence, ParaDefender comprises artificial cyberspace, computational experiments, and parallel execution. The basic idea is to make artificial and real cyberspaces executed in parallel to mutually guide each other for enhanced security, wherein the parallel execution is scenario driven in the sense that the scenarios originate from all possible spatial–temporal combinations of security threats in the metaverse. We also demonstrate how to land ParaDefender onto real-world applications, including the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) security operation application in the industrial metaverse, and the social governance application.