Cybersecurity in Digital Transformation applications: Analysis of Past Research and Future Directions

Abstract

The term digital is often used to indicate the changes occurring in today’s world, generally referred to as a cyber-physical system, driven by the rapid adoption of digital technologies, where the cyber and the physical worlds are partly overlapping. Digital transformation refers to the integration of the digital technology of the cyber world into all physical domains. These cyber-physical systems must be secure against the threat of cyberattacks. However, one of the most challenging aspects of cybersecurity is the evolving nature of cyberattack risks, which is highly integrated with digital transformation. Despite a number of published articles, there is little investigation of past literature analysis that presents digital transformation applications and cybersecurity trends. The objective of this paper is to provide an intensive examination of digital transformation applications and cybersecurity research between 2019 and 2022, to detect the most profound research areas, emphasize existing challenges and identify patterns, tendencies or regularities existing in the literature in terms of technological applications. This aims to support scholars with a comprehensive understanding of the past, present and future directions of this research trend. To achieve these objectives, a systematic literature review is utilized. The findings introduce several implications for the present state of the literature, apparent study gaps and several research questions, which can be explored in future research.