Future Scenarios and Challenges for Security and Privacy

TL;DR

This paper surveys 30 predictions about future security and privacy challenges, distills 10 scenarios, and discusses how evolving technology may impact stakeholders and require new safeguards over the next decade.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of emerging security and privacy scenarios, highlighting gaps in current guidelines and proposing future research directions.

Findings

Existing guidelines overlook stakeholder relationships.

Wearable devices introduce new privacy risks.

Insider threats remain a significant concern.

Abstract

Over the past half-century, technology has evolved beyond our wildest dreams. However, while the benefits of technological growth are undeniable, the nascent Internet did not anticipate the online threats we routinely encounter and the harms which can result. As our world becomes increasingly connected, it is critical we consider what implications current and future technologies have for security and privacy. We approach this challenge by surveying 30 predictions across industry, academia and international organisations to extract a number of common themes. Through this, we distill 10 emerging scenarios and reflect on the impact these might have on a range of stakeholders. Considering gaps in best practice and requirements for further research, we explore how security and privacy might evolve over the next decade. We find that existing guidelines both fail to consider the relationships between stakeholders and do not address the novel risks from wearable devices and insider threats. Our approach rigorously analyses emerging scenarios and suggests future improvements, of crucial importance as we look to pre-empt new technological threats.