Securing the Digital Frontier

The explosive growth of interconnected devices and digital platforms has led to cybersecurity becoming a cornerstone of modern technological infrastructure. In an era of AI-driven misinformation and smart IoT vulnerabilities, innovative defense mechanisms are more critical than ever.

This book offers a structured and insightful journey through the evolving landscape of cybersecurity, focusing on the pressing challenges posed by social media and IoT ecosystems. Readers explore ML frameworks designed to detect fake news and distorted social media campaigns, followed by methods to identify fake Instagram profiles and prevent impersonation. The discussion advances into technical territory with a threat surface analysis of smart IoT cameras, offering metrics to address their unique vulnerabilities. The book concludes by introducing a novel cryptographic hash function and a comparative analysis of IoT communication protocols.

By the end of this book, readers will be well-equipped with the knowledge and practical skills needed to identify, analyze, and mitigate cybersecurity threats across social media and IoT ecosystems. They will gain hands-on expertise in machine learning-based threat detection, firmware analysis, protocol evaluation, and advanced cryptographic techniques, empowering them to build and maintain more secure digital environments.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
● Understand the core principles of digital security and vulnerabilities in IoT infrastructures.
● Learn to detect fake news, manipulative campaigns, and social media misinformation tactics.
● Perform threat surface analysis of IoT camera systems.
● Learn behavior-based detection of advanced persistent threats.
● Implement an intrusion detection and prevention system.
● Apply taint analysis to detect firmware-level vulnerabilities.
● Introduce unique frameworks to enhance data integrity and resistance to hash-based attacks.
● Evaluate protocols like MQTT and CoAP using anomaly detection.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR
This book is designed for advanced cybersecurity professionals, IoT developers, academic researchers, graduate students, and policymakers. It is ideal for those looking to deepen their understanding of emerging cyber threats and learn practical, research-backed methods to secure digital and IoT ecosystems.

1. Foundations of Securing Digital Ecosystems
2. Fake Social Media News Detection Framework
3. Machine Learning-based Framework Detecting Fake Instagram Profiles
4. Unmasking Smart Device Vulnerabilities
5. Proactive Threat Hunts to Detect Persistence
6. Fortifying Smart Home Internet of Things Security
7. Framework for IoT Security in Smart Cities
8. Security Assessment of IoT Firmware
9. Polynomial-based Secure Hash Design
10. Comparing Internet of Things Communication Protocols

Akashdeep Bhardwaj is a distinguished academic and industry expert in the field of cybersecurity, digital forensics, and IT operations. He currently serves as a professor at UPES, Dehradun, India, where he also serves as the head of the Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. With a career spanning both academia and industry, he brings a unique blend of practical expertise and research-driven insight to the evolving landscape of digital security.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science and has completed his post-doctoral research at Majmaah University, Saudi Arabia. He has an impressive portfolio of over 150 international publications, including peer-reviewed papers indexed in SCI, Scopus, and Web of Science, as well as numerous copyrights and patents. In addition to his scholarly contributions, he has authored several books in the areas of cybersecurity and emerging technologies.

Prior to his academic tenure, he held leadership positions in several multinational technology organizations, where he gained extensive experience in IT operations, enterprise systems, and cyber risk management. He is also certified in a wide range of technologies, including Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and various industry standards in cybersecurity and compliance audits. A passionate mentor and educator, Akashdeep supervises graduate, postgraduate, and doctoral research, while also actively managing collaborative industry projects. His work continues to contribute significantly to the advancement of secure digital ecosystems in both academic and professional spheres.