Dear Colleagues,

Sensors are integrated in various devices (e.g., smartphones, home appliances, vehicles, and machines) and are used by many applications in many Internet of Things (IoT) sectors (e.g., smart health, smart agriculture, smart logistics, smart transportation, smart homes, smart cities, and smart industry). Furthermore, these sensors are usually interconnected in networks via wireless or wired links. Sensors collect sensitive data, and so they have become a target of malicious agents. Consequently, these sensor networks are exposed to security issues (e.g., authentication, access control, privacy, threats, attacks, trust management, data storage, device security, and communications security). A sensor network may be attacked using various methods (e.g., malware injection, denial of service, man in the middle, botnets, DNS spoofing, scavenging, data deduplication, jamming, tampering, and eavesdropping). Such attacks are commonly observed in modern ICT infrastructures supporting the deployment of smart IoT applications in eHealth, agriculture, industrial automation, power and energy systems, and transportation. These novel critical infrastructures include various security vulnerabilities due to their vast scale and dependency on smart sensor IoT devices. Major security concerns include confidentiality, integrity, availability, non-repudiation, privacy, authenticity, trustworthiness, accountability, auditability, etc. Many security techniques and protocols have been proposed for addressing special security problems in sensor networks, but there are still many open problems. Furthermore, the deployment of Software Defined Networking (SDN) in various IoT application domains has attracted the interest of researchers toward enhancing the robustness and safety of sensor communication networks in modern societies. However, many challenges remain regarding its efficient operation and reliability.

A special case of sensor networks is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Network. The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together innovative ideas, methods, techniques, solutions, and experiences addressing the security and privacy issues of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks. Reliability and efficiency are essential for the employment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks. Paper acceptance will be based on quality, relevance, and originality. The topics that can be addressed include, but are not limited to:

• Security models, frameworks, architectures, and protocols of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Security evaluation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Vulnerabilities and risk assessment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Detection of threats and attacks in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Secure routing and management in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Secure communications in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Security and privacy-preserving in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Intrusion detection and prevention in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Enhanced authentication in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks via cost-effective distributed edge solutions;
• AI- and machine-learning-enabled attacks in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• AI- and machine-learning-enabled defense methods in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Federated learning toward enabling privacy by design in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Energy efficient security management of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Blockchain solutions for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Accessing the security and vulnerabilities of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) remote sensing networks;
• Decentralized security mechanisms in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Economics of security of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks;
• Security visualization for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Networks.

Prof. Dr. Anastasios A. Economides
Prof. Dr. Panagiotis Sarigiannidis
Guest Editors

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