Autonomy is becoming mainstream. The anticipation is that cyber-physical-human systems and services enabled by autonomy will improve the future work conditions and the quality of life for humans and create new business models. To name a few examples, autonomous cars are test-driven on public streets by numerous companies, teams of robots that share the workspace with humans are showcased at airports and hospitals, new civilian and defense applications for drones surface by the day, and more and more human responsibilities in critical applications, including but not limited to infrastructure networks and medical diagnostics and hospital management, are shared with autonomous decision-makers.

On the other hand, a number of looming challenges—whether autonomous systems are safe and secure, whether we can assure their safety and security, whether humans will ever trust and work with them, whether we can integrate them at scale and whether we can do all these economically—overshadow the popular belief that a revolution driven by autonomy is imminent.

Given the already immense interest and investment in autonomy, we argue that it is exactly the right time to organize an international workshop to facilitate a dialogue and increase awareness among the stakeholders in the industry, government and academia.

This series of three workshops aimed to help create a unified understanding of the goals for assured autonomy and the research trends as well as near-term, mid-term and long-term research needs to support these goals.

Learn more about the Assured Autonomy workshop series on the series webpage and read the workshop report here.

Every four years the Computing Research Association, through its subcommittees, publishes a series of white papers called Quadrennial Papers that explore areas and issues around computing research with potential to address national priorities. The white papers attempt to portray a comprehensive picture of the computing research field detailing potential research directions, challenges, and recommendations. Below are the security and privacy related quadrennial papers from 2020:

• An Agenda for Disinformation Research white paper
• Modernizing Data Control: Making Personal Digital Data Mutually Beneficial for Citizens and Industry white paper
• A Research Ecosystem for Secure Computing white paper
• Post Quantum Cryptography: Readiness Challenges and the Approaching Storm white paper

In March 2020 the CCC released the 5G Security and Privacy – A Research Roadmap white paper by CCC Council Member Elisa Bertino (Purdue University), Syed Rafiul Hussain (Purdue University), and Omar Chowdhury (University of Iowa).

Abstract: Cellular networks represent a critical infrastructure and their security is thus crucial. 5G – the latest generation of cellular networks – combines different technologies to increase capacity, reduce latency, and save energy. Due to its complexity and scale, however, ensuring its security is extremely challenging. In this white paper, we outline recent approaches supporting systematic analyses of 4G LTE and 5G protocols and their related defenses and introduce an initial security and privacy roadmap, covering different research challenges, including formal and comprehensive analyses of cellular protocols as defined by the standardization groups, verification of the software implementing the protocols, the design of robust defenses, and application and device security.

For citation use: Bertino E., Hussain S. R., & Chowdhury O. (2020) 5G Security and Privacy – A Research Roadmap https://cra.org/ccc/resources/ccc-led-whitepapers/