Guest Editorial: Advances in Secure Distributed and Network-Based Computing

Modern information systems are geographically distributed, parallel and network-based computing systems. The vulnerability of such computing systems greatly exceed the vulnerability of stand-alone computers. This is due, primarily, to the openness scale and heterogeneity of computer networks themselves. Accordingly, there are many ways to realize modern network attacks against distributed, parallel and network-based computing systems. The number of security threats and ways of their implementation is constantly growing. The main reasons here are the disadvantages of modern information technologies, as well as a steady increase in the complexity of software and hardware. The special issue has the goal to demonstrate the latest developments in the area of security. The issue focuses on problems related to authentication, privacy, vulnerability analysis and design of secure embedded devices for parallel, distributed and network-based systems. This special issue includes four papers that outline different aspects of security in parallel, distributed and network-based computing. These papers are selected from papers submitted to and presented in Special Session “Security in Parallel, Distributed and Network-Based Computing (SPDNS’16)” on the 24th Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed and network-based Processing (PDP’16), Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 17-19 February 2016.