Digital Twin is one of the important and essential components of the metaverse. As, the metaverse is in it’s infant stage, there are many security challenges of using digital twins in metaverse. All these security concerns or challenges need to be addressed in coming days.
There are 7 security challenges of using digital twins in metaverse. Confidentiality, Integrity and Authentication is the three important security challenges of using digital twins in metaverse. Availability, Authentication, Identity management, etc are also well important.
This post will present you with the 7 security challenges of using digital twins in metaverse. But at first , it will introduce you with the concept of CIA triad in detail, which is the main aspect of security in any system.
CIA TRIAD
The CIA triad in information security means confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. This three elements are considered the three most crucial components of security of any system including metaverse and digital twin.
CONFIDENTIALITY OF CIA TRIAD
Confidentiality of CIA Triad is a set of rules that limits unauthorized users to access information. In a simple world, ensuring confidentiality means the right people can access sensitive information, while the wrong people cannot. This is done mainly by two methods as mentioned below.
- Data Encryption
- 2FA Authentication
- Biometric Verification.
INTEGRITY OF CIA TRIAD
Integrity in the CIA triad means any information should be trustworthy and accurate. Integrity of data is measured by data consistency and accuracy over the entire data life cycle. I will discuss how integrity is a security challenges of using digital twins in metaverse below.
Some measure to ensure integrity is
- File Permissions
- User Access Control
- Checksum
- Backup
AVAILABILITY OF CIA TRIAD
Availability of CIA triad ensures and guarantees the information is reliably accessed. It is done by maintaining all hardware and staying up to date.
System upgrades, providing bandwidth, preventing bottlenecks and fast disaster recovery is essential to make data and network reliable.
SECURITY CHALLENGES OF USING DIGITAL TWIN IN METAVERSE
In this section I will discuss the security challenges of using digital twins in metaverse. There are 7 security challenges using digital twins in metaverse. I will explain each one of them in detail one by one.
INTEGRITY
Integrity means accuracy, completeness and consistency of data over the entire life cycle of the data. In the simple world, integrity of data means data must not change during transit and steps must be taken for the data /information cannot be altered by unauthorized entities.
The above figure clearly illustrates the concept of integrity. A information/ data “XYZ” is sent from A to B. If the information received by B is “XY” or XYX” then there is no data integrity. The data received by B should be “XYZ”, then there will be data integrity.
SImilarly, in context to Digital Twin in metaverse, the submitted data of digital twin should not be changed along the submission process and after that. Digital Twin used should be the same as Digital twin has been created/submitted previously with no changes.
CONFIDENTIALITY
Confidentiality means protecting the data/information from being accessed by unauthorized users/system. In simple words, it means only the people who are authorized to access a particular data can access it and others can’t.
The above figure nicely illustrates the concept of confidentiality. In the figure, B is only authorized to receive data from A. So, A sends some information “XYZ” to B but during the transmission C tries to access the data sent by A. Due to confidentiality security features C is denied access to the data.
Confidentiality is an important security challenge of using digital twins in metaverse. There are many transactions and information exchanges between the physical world and digital twin, digital twin and other virtual assets and vice versa in metaverse. So, these information/data exchanges need to be confidential.
AVAILABILITY
Availability of digital twin is one of the security challenges of using digital twins in metaverse. Users in the physical or metaverse will demand that their digital twin be available or accessible at all times and places.
Since digital twin plays an important role in metaverse, availability is a critical security challenge of using digital twins in metaverse.
AUTHENTICATION
Authentication is verifying the user’s identity. In this post, authentication means verifying the identity of a digital twin in metaverse. It means whether the digital twin attached to a particular user is valid or not.
So, in the metaverse there will be a lot of interaction between different digital twins and other virtual assets. For example, A wants to talk with B. It should not be like that you are sharing information with C thinking he is B. The below diagram will clear the concept.
CENTRAL MANAGEMENT
Open metaverse or decentralized metaverse is the popular type of metaverse. Decentralization is an essential feature of metaverse. But are all the services and components of metaverse decentralized? The answer is No.
Most of the metaverse based services which manage users and components of metaverse like digital twin are centralized. Therefore, make digital twins decentralized is a security challenge of using digital twins in metaverse.
IDENTITY MANAGEMENT
Identity management is a huge security challenges of using digital twins in metaverse. Metaverse is a suitable arena for crimanals and users who misbehave. Identity management including registration, revoking and updating is a security challenge in metaverse.
Keyword Phrase is a common security safeguard while creating a wallet. This is not only used to access wallets but it is used to access NFT, Digital twin or other digital entities. So, there are mainly 3 security challenges of using digital twins in metaverse as indicated below.
- Submitting High Accuracy Digital Twin
- Updating Submitted Digital Twin
- Revoking Invalid Digital Twin
DATA DUPLICATION
Uniqueness is an essential feature in any metaverse. Take for example NFT, Digital Twin or other virtual assets. Copies or fake versions of digital twins can be mistaken as original digital twins.
So, the issue of duplicate digital twins is security challenges of using digital twins in metaverse. This decreases the value and validity of digital twins. So, mechanisms should be developed to prevent digital twin duplication in metaverse.
ENDNOTE
Summing up, you have seen that all the 7 security challenges of using digital twins in metaverse are important. They need to be addressed soon to make the metaverse more secure and trustworthy to all the users. So, solutions to these problems will be updated in near future and for that keep visiting this blog on metaverse.
