CFP: IEEE SECURECOMM SECOVAL'06, IEEE Xplore and JoATC proceedings, 2nd Workshop on the Value of Security through Collaboration

[Jean-Marc SEIGNEUR <jean-marc.seigneur () wanadoo fr>]

(We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this message)

CALL FOR PAPERS - SECOVAL 2006 - The Value of Security through Collaboration

in cooperation with IEEE/CREATE-NET SECURECOMM'06, http://www.securecomm.org.

As last year, all accepted papers will appear on the SECURECOMM CDs and in IEEE Xplore.
Then, the best contributions will be revised and extended for publication in a special issue of the Journal of 
Autonomic and Trusted Computing published by American Scientific Publishers.

Sep. 2, 2006, Baltimore, MD, USA

Aims and scope of the SECOVAL Workshop:

Security is usually centrally managed, for example in a form of policies duly executed by individual nodes. The SECOVAL 
workshop covers the alternative trend of using collaboration and trust to provide security.
Instead of centrally managed security policies, nodes may use specific knowledge (both local and acquired from other 
nodes) to make security-related decisions.
For example, in reputation-based schemes, the reputation of a given node (and hence its security access rights) can be 
determined based on the recommendations of peer nodes.
As systems are being deployed on ever-greater scale without direct connection to their distant home base, the need for 
self-management is rapidly increasing. Interaction after interaction, as the nodes collaborate, there is the emergence 
of a digital ecosystem.
By guiding the local decisions of the nodes, for example, with whom the nodes collaborate, global properties of the 
ecosystem where the nodes operate may be guaranteed. Thus, the security property of the ecosystem may be driven by 
self-organising mechanisms. Depending on which local collaboration is preferred, a more trustworthy ecosystem may 
emerge.   

The research addressed by the workshop can be roughly divided into three main areas, each answering the related 
research questions. Contributions should address at least one of these areas. It is expected that the workshop will 
address all of them.

1. It is necessary to define the reasoning behind current trends in security through collaboration. Does such security 
solve security issues that cannot be tackled by traditional security solutions? What is the added value of security 
through collaboration?
In the same line of thought, we should investigate the value of trust as a foundation of security. Specifically, 
changes to the nature of the security perimeter and possible pervasiveness of trust-based security through 
collaboration require investigation regarding scalability of such solutions in a world,
as envisioned by Weiser, where billions of computing entities are woven into the fabrics. Further, we should address 
the dynamics of such security that makes it possible to draw from trusted entities (both human and computers) and 
extend trust towards strangers, possibly through the self-learning of individual nodes.

2. The second set of contributions is expected to address the different approaches to and models of security through 
collaboration. Models of security and trust used for security through collaboration should take into account several 
aspects of trust evaluation,
including trust collection of evidence, the underlying trust methodology and model, the decision making process and the 
learning process. Reputation schemes have been already mentioned as one example, but there are several other possible 
collaboration models, rewarding for example individual experience or centrally managed evidence.
Further, models may consist of collaboration supervised by administrators or users or collaboration that is fully 
automated,
where the computing entities collaborate without human intervention and make security decisions on behalf of their 
owners. Self-organising and self-management mechanisms seem to be important for the emergence of a more trustworthy 
ecosystem of collaborating nodes.

3. Security through collaboration brings its own unique set of problems and risks. For example, privacy can be impacted 
by different aspects of collaboration, as more information about individuals may lead to better trust estimates. This 
inevitable breach of privacy may affect not only individuals
but may also propagate through the network of relationships. Further, collaboration invites new types of attacks that 
require new threat analysis. A well-known example of the vulnerabilities introduced by implicit trust relations is the 
Internet Worm that penetrated 5% of the Internet in 1988: once logged into one machine,
remote login into another machine part of the trust relations did not require another login/password check. Of course, 
many possible types of attack on different trust metrics exist, including identity usurpation attacks and identity 
multiplicity attacks such as Douceur’s Sybil attack.
Further, certain network topologies can be more vulnerable to specific forms of attacks and certain network nodes (e.g. 
most trusted ones) can be more likely to be attacked, which raises questions regarding additional protection such nodes 
may require.

Topics of interest to the workshop include, but are not limited to:

*       Approaches to security through collaboration

*       Specificities of security through collaboration

*       Trust methodologies, models and metrics

*       Interoperability and standardization of trust metrics

*       Value and meaning of trust

*       Trust-based security decision process

*       Security based on reputation and recommendations

*       Self-organisation mechanisms for a more secure digital ecosystem

*       The role of emergence in dynamic trust models

*       Collaborative autonomic computing

*       Value and models of networks of collaborators and information sharing

*       Threat and risk analysis of security through collaboration

*       Attacks due to collaboration and mitigation of these attacks

*       Technical trust of the underlying infrastructure used for deployment

*       Costs and benefits of trust and collaboration based security compared to other models

*       Privacy and legal aspects of security through collaboration


Submission guidelines are posted on the SECOVAL 2006 website (http://www.trustcomp.org/secoval/), which always contains 
the latest updates:
Authors are invited to submit papers formatted according to IEEE conference style 2-column (from a 2-page extended 
abstract to 10 pages limit). 
Paper submissions should be sent via the online management system available at http://www.trustcomp.org/secoval/.
Submissions will be accepted until 23.59 PM GMT, May 10, 2006.

For more information please visit: http://www.trustcomp.org/secoval/ or send an email to secoval () trustcomp org.

IMPORTANT DUE DATES

May 10, 2006: Paper submissions (until 23:59 PM GMT)

June 1, 2006: Author notification

June 25, 2006: Camera-ready copy according to IEEE conference style 2-column proceedings

Sep. 2, 2006: SECURECOMM in Baltimore, MD, USA

End of 2006: Preparation of the Journal special issue

Workshop Co-chairs:

Brajendra Panda, University of Arkansas, USA.

Richard Anthony, University of Greenwich, UK.

Stephen Marsh, National Research Council of Canada.

Jean-Marc Seigneur, University of Geneva, Switzerland.


Program Committee:

Brajendra Panda, University of Arkansas, USA.

Richard Anthony, University of Greenwich, UK.

Stephen Marsh, National Research Council of Canada.

Jean-Marc Seigneur, University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Giannis F. Marias, University of Athens, Greece.

Laurence T. Yang, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada.

Stefan Weber, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

Zoran Despotovic, DoCoMo Communications Laboratories Europe.

Katri Sarkio, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Finland.

Christian Damsgaard Jensen, Technical University of Denmark.

Jianhua Ma, Hosei University, Japan.

Filippo Ulivieri, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italy.

Karl Quinn, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

Michael R. Lyu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China.

Michael Kinateder, SAP, Germany.

Sini Ruohomaa, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Joerg Abendroth, Siemens, Germany.

Daniele Quercia, University College London, UK.

Lea Kutvonen, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Tom De Wolf, KULeuven, Belgium.

Adam Slagell, NCSA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.

Noria Foukia, University of Otago, New Zealand.

Licia Capra, University College London, UK.

Victor S. Grishchenko, Ural State University, Russia.

Konrad Wrona, SAP Research, France.

Ayman Kayssi, University of Beirut, Lebanon.

Lik Mui, Google Inc., USA.

Philip Robinson, University of Karlsruhe, Germany.

Magdy Saeb, Arab Academy for Science, Egypt.

Jennifer Golbeck, University of Maryland, USA.

Lalana Kagal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.

Marianne Winslett, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.

Paolo Massa, University of Trento, Italy.