However, the practice of Digital Security still faces a range of theoretical and practical challenges in the face of numerous emerging forms of computing and communication. At the heart of these challenges is AI, which is dramatically increasing the capabilities of both defenders and attackers in cybersecurity. At the same time, the internet of things is extending through every aspect of human society, from transport and industry to healthcare and entertainment. By some estimates, there will be 100 billion devices connected to this network by 2050.¹ That raises a host of security issues on a scale never seen before. Next-generation telecommunications networks based on 6G technologies will also need to be secured, as will biological information. Then there is the health, financial and personal data stored in the cloud that must be processed without revealing its content. And if that were not enough, the next decade will see quantum computing coming online, with computational power to crush some existing encryption systems. Securing these systems will be a significant task and developing the mathematical foundations to guarantee this security will be even tougher.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Thanks to increases in private, institutional and governmental activities in the digital sphere, there is a growing need for reliable and practical digital security solutions. Privacy and security are fundamental to democracy, economic activity, communications and healthcare delivery, but there is also a need for transparency in these activities, depending on the context. Researchers are developing a range of solutions for establishing, protecting and verifying Digital identity, with a growing use of biometric data offering particular challenges and opportunities. Novel encryption technologies are coming onto the market, although technological progress is necessarily slow here, and the prospect of emerging quantum computing systems able to challenge some of the most widely used encryption methods is creating some legitimate concern about whether encryption can stay ahead of encryption-breaking operations. Many of these concerns might be allayed through development of better and more wide-ranging Formal verification protocols, which provide reliable mathematical modelling of real-world capabilities and scenarios.