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Security engineering
Security engineering is the field of engineering dealing with the security and integrity of real-world systems. It is similar to systems engineering in that its motivation is to make a system meet requirements, but with the added dimension of enforcing a security policy. It has existed as an informal field for centuries, in the fields of locksmithing and security printing.
Technological advances, principally in the field of computers, have now allowed the creation of far more complex systems, with new and complex security problems. Because modern systems cut across many areas of human endeavor, security engineers not only need consider the mathematical and physical properties of systems; they also need to consider attacks on the people who use and form parts of those systems using social engineering attacks. Secure systems have to resist not only technical attacks, but also coercion, fraud, and deception by confidence tricksters.
For this reason it involves aspects of social science, psychology and economics, as well as physics, chemistry and mathematics. Some of the techniques used, such as fault tree analysis, are derived from safety engineering.
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Matter & Energy News
February 5, 2026
Feb. 5, 2026 A new metasurface design lets light of different spins bend, focus, and behave independently—while staying sharp across many colors. The trick combines two geometric phase effects so each spin channel can be tuned without interfering with the ...
Feb. 4, 2026 A new optical device allows researchers to generate and switch between two stable, donut-shaped light patterns called skyrmions. These light vortices hold their shape even when disturbed, making them promising for wireless data transmission. Using a ...
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Feb. 2, 2026 A new light-based breakthrough could help quantum computers finally scale up. Stanford researchers created miniature optical cavities that efficiently collect light from individual atoms, allowing many qubits to be read at once. The team has already ...
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Jan. 31, 2026 A strange, glowing form of matter called dusty plasma turns out to be incredibly sensitive to magnetic fields. Researchers found that even weak fields can change how tiny particles grow, simply by nudging electrons into new motions. In lab ...
Jan. 30, 2026 Researchers have found a way to make ordinary aluminum tubes float indefinitely, even when submerged for long periods or punched full of holes. By engineering the metal’s surface to repel water, the tubes trap air inside and refuse to sink, even ...
Jan. 29, 2026 Order doesn’t always form perfectly—and those imperfections can be surprisingly powerful. In materials like liquid crystals, tiny “defects” emerge when symmetry breaks, shaping everything ...
Jan. 29, 2026 Scientists have created a device that captures carbon dioxide and transforms it into a useful chemical in a single step. The new electrode works with realistic exhaust gases rather than requiring purified CO2. It converts the captured gas into ...
Jan. 26, 2026 Physicists have discovered that hidden magnetic order plays a key role in the pseudogap, a puzzling state of matter that appears just before certain materials become superconductors. Using an ultra-cold quantum simulator, the team found that even ...
Jan. 26, 2026 Researchers have demonstrated that quantum entanglement can link atoms across space to improve measurement accuracy. By splitting an entangled group of atoms into separate clouds, they were able to measure electromagnetic fields more precisely than ...
Jan. 25, 2026 Researchers have developed a technique that allows them to carve complex three dimensional nanodevices directly from single crystals. To demonstrate its power, they sculpted microscopic helices from a magnetic material and found that the structures ...
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