The rapid development of modern computer and Internet technologies is strongly connected with creation of the new computational paradigms as well as advanced information systems for secure communication between smart tech devices and humans. One of the reasons for the big progress in modern computer and communication technologies is due to the state-of-the-art achievements in soft computing approaches, cognitive computer science and a great number of other algorithmic techniques. It is also inspired by biology solutions (artificial intelligence, bioinspired computation, etc.). Recently, such methods have had a great importance. We can utilize these methods to intelligently analyze a great amount of complex data as well as manage in secure manner the data transmissions over global communication networks. The possibility of further development of such technology will depend on many factors, such as designing new solution in security areas, and introducing a generation and cognitive information systems based on natural computation approaches. These subjects, as well as a number of others, like the ways of using biological models to invent new solutions in the field of natural computing, computational intelligence and secure communication pro- This time, our call for papers was warmly responded from all over the world. After rigorous review, only 13 papers were accepted. They provide readers with a showcase of the most recent challenges and advances in the topics of this special issue. We believe that these papers can indeed trigger further R&D improvements as well as promote state-of-theart projects and case analyses of practical significance related to this important subject. In the following, we will briefly introduce these papers one by one.The first paper entitled Data Stream Visualization Framework for Smart Cities by Villanueva et al. (2015) considers that monitoring smart cities is a key challenge due to the variety of data streams generated by different processes (traffic, human dynamics, pollution, energy supply, water supply, etc.). All these streams show what, where and when something is happening in the city. This paper applied different types of glyphs for illustrating real-time stream evolution of data gathered in the city. The purpose is making the most out of human capability for outperforming in detecting visual patterns.The second paper, entitled Using Fuzzy Logic to Reduce Ping-Pong Handover Effects in LTE Networks by Tsai et al. (2015) proposed a fast and simple fuzzy-logic-based handover decision system, named fuzzy-based low ping-pong effect handover system (FPEHS), to reduce the ping-pong effect in an LTE network. In the FPEHS, five parameters, including current signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), detected SNR, bandwidth of serving eNB, bandwidth of target eNB, and remaining energy of the underlying user's device, are input to the fuzzy logic unit to make handover decision. Their simulation results show that the FPEHS can effectively decrease the ping-pong effect to about 92.94 %, on average compare...