Issues of privacy and security now affect all citizens, as well as state-level operations. The pervasive use of digital technology means that, for an equitable society, personal data and communications have to be encrypted in ways that allow transactions and access to services such as welfare payments, healthcare and voting facilities, as well as private web-browsing, messaging and mobile-phone use.

Future Horizons:

×××

5-yearhorizon

AI cybercrimes change focus of security

AI is used to encourage people to use IT systems without employing proper security measures. A handful of spectacular cybercrimes demonstrate the role of AI in exploiting weaknesses in conventional security systems. The issue focuses the global security community on whether and how to control AI as well as how to balance citizens’ rights with public safety.

10-yearhorizon

Augmented reality redraws privacy boundaries

Malicious state-level cyber-activity becomes so damaging for privacy and security that it forces an expansion of the definition of cyberwarfare. That lowers barriers to conventional war while raising the stakes for digital diplomacy. Growing activity in the metaverse focuses security research onto the challenges of privacy and safety in immersive environments. Awareness-raising about abuse of data-sharing causes individuals to take more control of their personal data, as well as protect themselves with more use of multifactor authentication.

25-yearhorizon

Tension grows between the digital haves and have-nots

Countries with secure digital infrastructures experience significant growth in their knowledge-based economies, often at the expense of digital privacy. But countries without this capability suffer economic hardship, and the division dramatically redraws the global balance of power.

This requires a vast technological infrastructure that is not only efficient and secure, but also — depending on the context — private yet transparent. At issue is the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information as well as related concerns over authenticity, accountability and reliability. There is also the inevitable trade-off between privacy and system functionality that individuals must navigate, which often brings into focus tensions between the way people think about privacy and the way they act.²

New technologies are also raising security and privacy issues. Video analysis can reveal an individual’s identity and location but also the people they meet, their mood and even certain medical conditions. The transmission and storage of biometric data requires the implementation of new protocols, and the increasing prevalence and accessibility of a wide range of biology-based data (such as genomic information, healthcare data and access protocols for laboratory samples of weaponisable pathogens) means that “cyberbiosecurity” is an emerging research topic of significant importance. AI is also changing this landscape,³ not least because of its pattern-recognition capabilities and the potential it offers to automate many tracking processes.

Privacy and security - Anticipation Scores

The Anticipation Potential of a research field is determined by the capacity for impactful action in the present, considering possible future transformative breakthroughs in a field over a 25-year outlook. A field with a high Anticipation Potential, therefore, combines the potential range of future transformative possibilities engendered by a research area with a wide field of opportunities for action in the present. We asked researchers in the field to anticipate:

The uncertainty related to future science breakthroughs in the field
The transformative effect anticipated breakthroughs may have on research and society
The scope for action in the present in relation to anticipated breakthroughs.

This chart represents a summary of their responses to each of these elements, which when combined, provide the Anticipation Potential for the topic. See methodology for more information.