Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has transformed genomic research and healthcare by enabling the rapid and cost-effective sequencing of DNA and RNA, surpassing traditional techniques such as Sanger sequencing. This technological leap has had a profound impact on fields including biomedical research, personalised medicine, cancer genomics, agriculture, and forensic sciences. With its widespread adoption, NGS has made genomic information more accessible, facilitating the sequencing of millions of genomes. However, the growing reliance on NGS has also brought significant challenges related to cyber-biosecurity, particularly the protection of genomic data against cyber threats such as unauthorised access, data breaches, and exploitation. Genomic data is inherently sensitive, and vulnerabilities in NGS technologies, software, data-sharing practices, and open-access databases expose it to risks concerning data confidentiality, integrity, and privacy. While NGS data plays an indispensable role across numerous sectors, research addressing the cyber-biosecurity of these technologies remains fragmented. Most existing studies focus narrowly on specific areas, such as microbial sequencing or system architecture, and fail to provide a holistic perspective on the security challenges that span the entire NGS workflow. Additionally, the lack of interdisciplinary collaboration between the biotechnology and cybersecurity communities further exacerbates these gaps. This paper seeks to bridge these gaps by thoroughly examining cyber-biosecurity threats throughout the NGS workflow. It introduces a tailored taxonomy specifically designed for NGS, aimed at increasing stake-holder awareness of potential vulnerabilities and threats. Key insights include identifying vulnerabilities at various stages of the NGS process—from data generation to analysis and storage—and categorising these threats systematically. The study highlights critical gaps in current research, underscoring the need for interdisciplinary collaboration between experts in biotechnology and cybersecurity. It calls for focused efforts to mitigate risks associated with unauthorised access, data misuse, and exploitation. Failure to address these vulnerabilities could result in severe consequences, such as breaches of medical confidentiality, ethical concerns, and the potential for misuse in malicious applications like genetic warfare or bioterrorism. By providing a comprehensive analysis, this paper advocates for intensified research efforts and collaborative strategies to protect genomic data and ensure its ethical and secure use.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are one of the most important engines to add to the global economy by providing financial benefits to the human population, in the form of businesses (90%) and employment ships (60%). With the increase in the ratio of cybercrimes, SMEs have been overlooked in terms of cybersecurity measures, leaving them unprepared to deal with the increasing frequency, sophistication, and destructiveness of cyber challenges. This scoping review is designed to address the various cybersecurity threats to SMEs and their possible overcome. In this review, various databases such as Google Scholar, IEEE, Elsevier, Science Direct, and Taylor & Francis online were utilized in exploring the reported literature, and searched under various terminologies, in combinations and separately. Overall, 30 research articles were found to be most relevant to the respective topic, from which 20 unique themes were identified and categorized in novel findings. A framework was proposed for this scoping review by performing data analysis, which led us to find 20 different types of cyber challenges in SMEs. These challenges were further standardized into four classes. In this review, the main challenges to attaining cybersecurity resilience in SMEs are found to be a lack of awareness, unsuitable guidelines for SMEs, limited cybersecurity Knowledge, and constrained financial resources.

The prevalence of cyberbullying toward minorities has been a global concern in the last decade. This concern reached a crescendo during the COVID-19 pandemic as many online users became more active on Twitter, using the social media to harass and threaten vulnerable groups. The aftereffects of COVID-19. Aside from the increase in technology use, there are other factors at play that are causing an increase in cyberbullying. For instance, when there is a major crisis like the one that COVID-19 brings, this puts everyone on edge, and kids are no exception. As a result, hostility toward others tends to increase along with self-preserving and self-defensive behaviours. In this work, we proposed a novel framework to detect cyberbullying on Twitter. This framework combined the attention layer and the convolutional pooling layer to extract cyberbullying-related keywords from users’ tweets efficiently. We probed the effectiveness of the proposed model using 47000 labelled tweets, which were categorized into cyberbullying classes such as age, ethnicity, gender, religion, type of cyberbullying, and non-cyberbullying. In this research we used two sets of combinations. In the first part we used the combination of CNN and ML models. In this structure we used convolutional layers as feature extractor and then we used ML models such as RF and LR , CNN-XGB, CNN-LSTM, CNN attention for classification.

Modern database systems are critical for storing sensitive information but are increasingly targeted by cyber threats, including SQL injection (SQLi) attacks. This research proposes a robust security framework leveraging Docker-based virtualisation to enhance database security and mitigate the impact of SQLi attacks. A controlled experimental methodology evaluated the framework’s effectiveness using Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA) and Acunetix databases. The findings reveal that Docker significantly reduces the vulnerability to SQLi attacks by isolating database instances, thereby safeguarding user data and system integrity. While Docker introduces a significant increase in CPU utilisation during high-traffic scenarios, the trade-off ensures enhanced security and reliability for real-world applications. This study highlights Docker’s potential as a practical solution for addressing evolving database security challenges in distributed and cloud environments.

Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) play a crucial role in the global economy, accounting for approximately two-thirds of global employment and contributing significantly to the GDP of developed countries. Despite the availability of various cybersecurity standards and frameworks, SMEs remain highly vulnerable to cyber threats. Limited resources and a lack of expertise in cybersecurity make them frequent targets for cyberattacks. It is essential to identify the challenges faced by SMEs and explore effective defensive strategies to enhance the implementation of cybersecurity measures. The study aims to bridge the gap and help these organizations in implementing cost-effective and practical cybersecurity approaches through a systematic mapping study (SMS) conducted, where 73 articles were thoroughly reviewed. This research will shed light on the current cybersecurity approaches (practices) posture for different SMEs, along with the threats they are facing, which have stopped them from deciding, planning, and implementing cybersecurity measures. The study identified a wide range of cybersecurity threats, including phishing, social engineering, insider threats, ransomware, malware, denial of services attacks, and weak password practices, which are the most prevalent for SMEs. This study identified defensive practices, such as cybersecurity awareness and training, endpoint protection tools, incident response planning, network segmentation, access control, multi-factor authentication (MFA), access controls, privilege management, email authentication and encryption, enforcing strong password policies, cloud security, secure backup solutions, supply chain visibility, and automated patch management tools, as key measures. The study provides valuable insights into the specific gaps and challenges faced by SMEs, as well as their preferred methods of seeking and consuming cybersecurity assistance. The findings can guide the development of targeted defensive practices and policies to enhance the cybersecurity posture of SMEs for successful software development. This SMS will also provide a foundation for future research and practical guidelines for SMEs to improve the process of secure software development.