Network security is becoming more and more a key aspect in modern communication networks to provide enhanced services in various contexts, e.g., radio mobile access, smart cities, power distribution, smart industries, etc. The availability of powerful devices potentially allows hackers to perform sophisticated attacks. Moreover, the rapid evolution towards 5G and beyond wireless technologies, in conjunction with artificial intelligence techniques, is pushing a lot of effort in researching new network security solutions. In fact, modern communication networks require security aspects to be properly taken into account: ranging from data-related aspects (i.e., confidentiality, integrity, and availability) to architecture design issues (e.g., access protection and attack prevention).
The research on network security at the Net4U Lab of the University of Cagliari is focused on various aspects, with great emphasis on realistic experimental deployments. Examples are (not limited to) the following.
- Security in IoT to prevent unauthorized resource access and privacy of the collected data, by leveraging lightweight security mechanism and protocols to deal with the inherent low complexity and power limitations.
- Intelligent network security schemes, by bringing artificial intelligence into security protocols and architectures.
- Energy-efficient and integre blockchain architectures with applications to Industry 4.0, smart grids, supply chain, etc.