Preparing for what’s next: Future-proofing networks for artificial intelligence, IoT, and smart infrastructure

Securing a sustainable, trustworthy digital economy today relies on the intelligent and efficient operation of a multitude of software platforms and systems deployed at scale and in a distributed way, that bring the world together, help people connect, discover, interact, collaborate, learn, trade, transact, and share knowledge or content. Reliable, intelligent transport of digital information is the lifeblood of this economy. Securing the infrastructural underpinnings of this economy is increasingly recognized as being as critical as securing the pillars of the brick-and-mortar economies of old. The vast majority of these platforms and systems rely on networks to interconnect the sensors that bring data into the cloud for processing and enable data flow back out to the end-users. The growing number of IoT smart infrastructures are built to move beyond the traditional data collection role of legacy IoT systems, and automate the decision-making, control, and operation of physical systems (Chowdhury et al., 2022; Challoumis, 2025; Das & Adhikari, 2025).