Call for Papers: Special Issue on Privacy and Trust in Cyber-Pandemics

The response to major epidemics and pandemics known in recent history, such as plague and cholera, has been mostly focused on minimizing human contact, especially between infected and healthy individuals. The same public health strategies have been deployed to contain the spread of the COVID-19 disease and maintain social structures in this pandemic that the world is currently facing. However, with the technological capabilities of the current times and the data-driven world we live in, the response to this new pandemic has significantly relied on data-based tracking, data analytics, and machine learning. Some initial research already suggests that this could have had significant effects on individual privacy and on their trust in some systems and technologies. At the same time, social distancing and lockdowns have shifted almost all aspects of human communication, including for work, to the digital space. This strong increase in reliance on digital communications and the sudden need for its adoption in different scopes have created an advantage for cybersecurity criminals and opportunists. With more and more assets online, cyberattacks become more profitable and more attractive in return on investment. An increase in cyberattacks that can also have pandemic potential in terms of spread and effects on society at large is a risk that cannot be overlooked.

Important Dates

• Submissions due: 12 January 2022
• First-round review due: 2 March 2022
• Revision due: 20 April 2022
• Final decision notification: 25 May 2022
• Camera-ready submission due: 8 June 2022
• Publication: July/August 2022

More here