Privacy-Preserving and Intelligent Networked Infrastructures for Secure Smart Education Environments

The rapid adoption of cloud computing, edge systems, and IoT devices in academic institutions has created a new generation of smart campus environments that depend on complex, distributed communication networks. These interconnected systems must simultaneously deliver real-time data exchange, support AI-driven services, and protect the privacy and integrity of sensitive educational data, including student records, behavioral data, and institutional communications.Despite growing demand, existing network architectures were not designed for the scale, sensitivity, or heterogeneity of modern smart education deployments. Challenges include securing communication channels across distributed edge-cloud infrastructures, enforcing data minimization at the network level, managing trust across multi-party systems, and ensuring protocol interoperability across diverse campus IoT environments.This Research Topic focuses on the networking and distributed systems challenges at the core of secure and privacy-aware smart education environments. It brings together original research on communication protocols, network architecture, and distributed trust mechanisms specifically designed or adapted for smart campus deployments. Contributions should address the protocol, architectural, and systems-level dimensions of these challenges, with clear grounding in communication networks and distributed systems research.This Research Topic welcomes original research articles, reviews, case studies, and perspective papers on the following and related themes:- Privacy-preserving communication protocols for educational networks- Edge computing and fog architectures for secure smart campus data processing- Distributed trust management and authentication in multi-party campus networks- Secure IoT network design and management for smart campus environments- Software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) for adaptive educational infrastructures- Privacy-by-design approaches to network architecture in educational settings- Intrusion detection and anomaly detection systems for campus network environments- Scalable and resilient communication infrastructures for hybrid and remote learning- Federated approaches to network data processing with privacy guarantees- Interoperability standards and protocol design for heterogeneous IoT campus deploymentsAll submissions must demonstrate technical rigor with grounding in communication networks, distributed systems, or network security. Interdisciplinary contributions that connect networking solutions to real-world educational deployment constraints are particularly encouraged. Topic editors: BILAL HASSAN, Preeti Patel, Ahmad Alshammari Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83778/privacy-preserving-and-intelligent-networked-infrastructures-for-secure-smart-education-environments