Sustainable security & safety: Challenges and opportunities

A significant proportion of today’s information and communication technology (ICT) systems are entrusted with high value assets, and our modern society has become increasingly dependent on these systems operating safely and securely over their anticipated lifetimes. However, we observe a mismatch between the lifetimes expected from ICT-supported systems (such as autonomous cars) and the duration for which these systems are able to remain safe and secure, given the spectrum of threats they face. Whereas most systems today are constructed within the constraints of foreseeable technology advancements, we argue that long term, i.e., sustainable security & safety, requires anticipating the unforeseeable and preparing systems for threats not known today. In this paper, we set out our vision for sustainable security & safety. We summarize the main challenges in realizing this desideratum in real-world systems, and we identify several design principles that could address these challenges and serve as building blocks for achieving this vision.