Augmented reality and the digital twin: State-of-the-art and perspectives for cyber security

The rapid advancements of technology related to the Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems mark an ongoing industrial revolution. Digital Twins and Augmented Reality play a significant role in this technological advancement. They are highly complementary concepts enabling the representation of physical assets in the digital space (Digital Twin) and the augmentation of physical space with digital information (Augmented Reality). Throughout the last few years, research has picked up on this and explored the possibilities of combining DT and AR. However, cybersecurity scholars have not yet paid much attention to this combined-arms approach, despite its potential. Especially, concerning contemporary security challenges, such as developing cyber situational awareness and including human factors into cybersecurity, AR and DT, offer tremendous potential for improvement. In this work, we systematize existing knowledge on AR-powered DTs and shed light on why and how cybersecurity could benefit from this combination.