Cybersecurity of everyday and disruptive technologies

Nowadays, we talk about disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and 6G communications and their potential to bring about radical change in business and society at large. From a cybersecurity perspective, these technologies pose challenges that we need to tackle. In many cases, security for these technologies is an afterthought, which makes building truly robust and secure systems difficult.

These disruptive technologies are also somewhat unknown to us, and we don’t always know how to secure them. Although many of the basic principles of cybersecurity apply to these technologies, the details of implementation may be different from those we are accustomed to. It is always possible that new technologies have completely new risks and threats for which we need to develop new mitigations.

As one of the disruptive technologies of today, 6G is no exception to the above issues. Although every generation of cellular communications technology has been developed with improved security methods and controls, there is still work to do. When communications become an integral and necessary part of the underlying fabric of our society, security needs to improve and evolve to rise to the new challenges. We need to secure the new 6G networks against adversaries that may have access to some disruptive technology of their own, such as cryptography-breaking quantum computers. We need to make sure that these security measures do not impact the needs of the end users too much. And we must be aware of the more mundane threats that might still be used effectively against this new technology.

If disruptive technology is successful, it will become everyday technology at some point. This has happened with, for example, the Internet, smartphones and computers. We have learned over the years how to make these more secure, but some of the original design choices and ideas have made building security much more difficult. When we are now starting to build new technologies, we should not lose the lessons learned, but instead take them into use. This way, once the new technologies become commonplace, we will have better security and be ready for novel use cases.

It is also important to remember that most new innovations will be built on top of old and existing technologies. In many cases, the new disruptions can be heavily reliant on the old systems and technologies. Thus, we need to secure our everyday technologies in order to build secure disruptive technologies. This requires a lot of work, which needs to begin now. And for the future, we need to choose security from the start.

We live in a society where our security environment is constantly changing. Network-connected digital and space-based services are vulnerable to ongoing cyber-attacks. The goal of our SafeEarth research programme at the University of Oulu is to gather cutting-edge knowledge about the security implications of space-related phenomena, cyber threats and hybrid influencing activities to secure vital societal tasks.

Comprehensive security means promoting security and preparedness for various threats and securing the vital functions of society. Language use, communication and information practices are key areas of comprehensive security. How ordinary people are informed and warned about information security threats is of great importance? If telecommunications connections are interrupted, our behavior and sense of security will be different if the reason is stated to be deliberate interference by another state or a purely temporary routine software update.

The amount of technology in space is growing at a dizzying rate. Satellite cybersecurity must take into account both the impact of space phenomena on the devices and cyberattacks made by humans on them. This type of research highlights the multidisciplinary nature of the University of Oulu and the researchers' deep understanding of the operation of communication devices in a harsh environment in different areas in our geopolitically central location.

SafeEarth research programme integrates the University of Oulu’s specialised research areas in space security, cybersecurity, and human security into a comprehensive and relevant security theme amid ongoing global geopolitical tensions. The research programme is supported by the Research Council of Finland PROFI8 funding (2025-2031).