Advanced approaches for information processing in multimedia, decision‐making, and security systems

In recent years, we can observe how new advanced computing technologies and computational approaches are very successfully applied in many application areas connected with VR/AR, multimedia technologies, decision-making and information extraction solutions, pattern classification, and security systems. Such enormous progress in application of intelligent information processing techniques is mostly possible thanks to the development of new computing approaches and application of techniques especially oriented on using innovative models for information processing, cognitive computing based on human thinking models and perceptual abilities, and transformative computing. Especially, human-oriented information processing methods allow to intelligently analyze a great amount of data (multimedia, Cloud, classified, etc), store them, manage in secure manner, and transmit between distributed peers using global communication networks. Further development of such technologies will be dependent on future, and next-generation computing approaches oriented for information fusion, data understanding, semantic reasoning, and encryption of processed data. These subjects, as well as a number of others, connected with advanced information processing and securing methodologies, for pervasive computing, IoT, smart infrastructure, 5G communication networks, VR/AR technologies, will form the subject of a Special Issue on Advanced approaches for information processing in multimedia, decision-making and security systems in the Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience Journal. To this Special Issue were selected eight articles of particular interest, which present the most interesting research activities and results within the subject matter of this Special Issue. The paper “Minority oversampling based on the attraction-repulsion Weber problem” by Fiore1 presents novel solutions for learning in imbalanced data sets, where one class is underrepresented. To solve this problem, a modification to the interpolation procedure of synthetic minority oversampling technique is proposed, in which all the neighboring data points can be considered in the interpolation, including also time the information about their class. At each iteration of the procedure, the newly created instance should be at the same moment as close as possible to other neighboring instances of the same class but as far as possible to the neighboring instance from another classes. This formulation reminds of the Weber problem, defined as an optimization problem involving the minimization of a location function depending on the distances from a set of reference points. The paper entitled “Vulnerability analysis on the image-based authentication: through the WM_INPUT message” by Lee et al2 presents studies on influence of mouse data exposer for possibilities of performing security attack in image-based authentication. Authors present some vulnerabilities of existed solutions oriented for banking services and perform security analysis for message handler procedure, which is critical to prevent vulnerabilities. The paper entitled “Augmented reality for botulinum toxin injection” by Kim et al3 presented a new idea of application of AR technologies in surgical training and facial muscles treatment. Authors implemented an AR application for oral and maxillofacial region injections using Unity 3D engine and evaluation of recognition accuracy of soft-tissue markers. Facial detection was based on deep learning approaches. According presented results, the accuracy of markers detection was quite satisfactory, so the method can increase surgical efficiency by future application of AR techniques in real surgical operations. The paper “A secure and efficient WSN by employing symmetric key matrix and rectangular frame scheme” by Huang et al4 presents a new efficient techniques for secure data encryption in 5G networks. A new approach, named the symmetric key matrix and rectangular frame scheme (SKeMRF), is described, which involves security mechanisms to increase encryption operations for a wireless sensor networks. The SKeMRF allows to integrate global symmetric key matrix and other security mechanisms to ensure the security of transmitted data and enable the system to effectively resist the forgery KDS attack. The paper entitled “New protocols of cognitive data management and sharing in cloud computing” by Ogiela and Takizawa5 presents new solutions, which allow to divide and share confidential data in the cloud. In particular, new algorithms called cognitive threshold schemes were presented, which, for secret division, use a graph and multilevel representation. Secret reconstruction is possible with relation of proper shadows selection, which fulfils some requirements for data reconstruction. The paper entitled “Cognitive cryptography for data security in cloud computing” by Ogiela6 presented new classes of authentication codes. Especially, the author introduced cognitive CAPTCHA protocols oriented for multilevel authentication of user groups, based on expert knowledge in any expertise areas, as well as high cognitive skills. The paper “New public auditing protocol based on homomorphic tags for secure cloud storage” by Zhang et al7 describes an improved auditing protocol for secure cloud storage. Authors describes why recently proposed dynamic-hash-table based public auditing protocol oriented for secure cloud storage is not enough secure. Proved that one core building block of mentioned protocol i.e. the signature algorithm can be attacked, and the tags corresponding to the blocks can be forged. Finally authors described an improvement to the protocol, and perform efficiency and security analysis for new solution. The paper entitled “Securing PIN-based authentication in smartwatches with just two gestures” by Guerar et al8 presents security extension for mobile devices authentication method against several cyber security attacks. In particular, authors define 2GesturePIN framework for smart watches authentication, which uses only simple gesture for authentication, maintaining a high level of usability for smart device. I believe that papers included in this Special Issue will have a great impact for future scientific research and make a contribution to the studies conducted by other researchers and practitioners who work in the area of advanced information processing systems and computer security. I would like to express my sincere appreciation of the valuable contributions made by all authors. I would like also to express my special thanks to Professor Geoffrey C. Fox from Indiana University, Editor-in-Chief of the Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience Journal, for allowing to publish this Special Issue and for his great support throughout the entire publication process.