Smart, Secure, and Sustainable Digital Futures

This comprehensive volume provides a multidisciplinary exploration of the design, governance, and sustainability of emerging digital systems by integrating theoretical foundations with empirical studies. The text takes a closer look at trust, security, and responsible innovation, across four thematic pillars: conceptual foundations, cybersecurity resilience, AI governance, and human-centred applications.

By bridging the gap between technical depth and conceptual clarity, the book offers a holistic perspective on how digital transformation can be aligned with global sustainability goals. Collectively, it serves as an authoritative roadmap for navigating the complexities of the modern socio-technical landscape, ensuring that technological progress stays safe and resilient. The reader learns insights from computer science, governance, and social sciences through a unified socio-technical framework. The authors address the bedrock requirements of "smart" systems, transparency, explainability, and ethical oversight, through a detailed examination of Explainable AI (XAI) and user-centred e-voting. A significant strength of the book is that it balances global and emerging-economy perspectives. For example, AI-driven energy forecasting in Malaysia and CRM governance in Indonesia provide practitioners with scalable insights that are often missing in Western-centric literature. By transitioning from rigorous academic theory to practical applications such as IoT-enabled fire detection and SME ransomware resilience, the volume remains equally relevant to corporate boardrooms and research laboratories. Furthermore, the focus on future-proof concepts such as "digital resilience" ensures the content remains applicable long after specific software versions or hardware trends have evolved. This combination of strategic, data-driven, and systems-oriented perspectives ensures that readers gain a 360-degree view of the digital economy. The chapters balance technical rigour with accessibility, making complex topics such as Snort IDS enhancements and malicious URL detection understandable to a broad professional audience while maintaining the integrity of the underlying research.

The book targets industry practitioners, SME leaders, and sustainability officers who require practical, data-driven frameworks for building resilience. The other readership group includes researchers, postgraduate students, and policymakers seeking an authoritative reference on the design and governance of trustworthy digital systems. This book is part of the book series, Technology for Smart Environments and Sustainable Futures

Norliza Katuk, the primary editor, is an associate professor of cybersecurity at the School of Computing, Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM). Her research interests include information security and privacy, and cybersecurity awareness, and she has published widely in international journals and serves as a reviewer for several esteemed publications.

Roberto Vergallo is a tenured assistant professor of Software Engineering and Green Computing at Pegaso University (Italy). His research interests include fintech, sustainable software engineering, green AI, and digital ethics. He is co-founder of Vidyasoft srl, a spin-off company of Salento University (Italy).

Noradila Nordin is a senior lecturer in computing and digital technology at the School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering at the University of East London in the United Kingdom. Her research interests include augmented reality, artificial intelligence applications, and wireless sensor networks.