AI-Driven Cybersecurity: Advancing Threat Detection and Defense
A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Computing and Artificial Intelligence".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 195
Special Issue Editors
Interests: cyber security, including data-driven cybersecurity incidents prediction, visualization and discovery through data analytics and machine learning techniques
Interests: applied cryptography; automotive security; network security; digital watermarking
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
With the rapid advancement of digital technologies and the widespread adoption of interconnected systems, the methods and techniques used in cyberattacks have become increasingly complex and diverse. Traditional cybersecurity approaches often struggle to keep pace with these evolving threats. Artificial Intelligence (AI), as an emerging and transformative technology, is playing an increasingly critical role in cybersecurity by offering innovative solutions for threat detection, defense mechanisms, and risk management.
This Special Issue, titled “AI-Driven Cybersecurity: Advancing Threat Detection and Defense”, aims to showcase the latest research developments and practical applications of AI in the field of cybersecurity. It seeks to explore how AI can be leveraged to strengthen security frameworks, enhance real-time threat detection, automate responses to cyber incidents, and predict vulnerabilities before they are exploited. By gathering insights from both academia and industry, this issue will provide a platform on which the key challenges and opportunities in applying AI may be discussed in order to address modern and emerging cybersecurity threats.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- AI-powered threat detection and response systems, including machine learning and deep learning approaches.
- Applications of natural language processing (NLP) in detecting phishing, malware, and social engineering attacks.
- Autonomous cybersecurity systems for real-time defense.
- Securing Internet of Things (IoT) devices and critical infrastructure using AI.
- Predictive analytics for identifying vulnerabilities and mitigating risks.
- Challenges of adversarial attacks against AI-driven cybersecurity systems (e.g., adversarial machine learning, data poisoning).
- AI solutions for combating ransomware, botnets, and zero-day threats.
- Integrating AI with traditional cybersecurity strategies and tools.
- Ethical, legal, and regulatory considerations for AI in cybersecurity.
- Case studies and real-world applications of AI in cybersecurity.
This Special Issue seeks to provide a comprehensive perspective on the transformative potential of AI in reshaping the field of cybersecurity. Submissions that address theoretical advances, practical implementations, or ethical implications of AI in cybersecurity are particularly welcome.
By focusing on these critical areas, this Special Issue aims to contribute to the development of innovative, AI-driven solutions and foster a deeper understanding of how more adaptive and resilient defenses can be built in the face of an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape.
Dr. Nan Sun
Dr. Arcangelo Castiglione
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. Applied Sciences 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 2400 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
- artificial intelligence in cybersecurity
- threat detection and response
- machine learning for cyber defense
- ethical challenges in AI-driven security
- predictive analytics in security
- adversarial machine learning
- automated incident response
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