Call for Papers

Elsevier Future Generation Computer Systems (FGCS)

Special Issue on Emerging Topics in Defending Networked Systems

-Impact Factor: 4.639-

https://www.journals.elsevier.com/future-generation-computer-systems/call-for-papers/emerging-topics-in-defending-networked-systems

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Important Dates:
Deadline for manuscript submissions: Jan 25th, 2020
(Submission system will be opened on Nov 15th, 2019).

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Guest Editors:

Steffen Wendzel, Fraunhofer FKIE & Hochschule Worms, Germany
(Corresponding Guest Editor)

Wojciech Mazurczyk, Warsaw University of Technology, Poland

Luca Caviglione, National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Italy

Amir Houmansadr, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA


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In recent years, novel security threats arose, be it due to
sophisticated malware obfuscation, anti-forensics techniques, advanced
methods of network steganography/information hiding, newer
de-anonymization methods or improved social engineering approaches.
Increasingly heterogeneous and inter-networked environments allow such
threats to become more difficult to combat, e.g., due to the
ever-broader spectrum of IoT and CPS protocols and heterogeneous
hardware platforms, over-complex frameworks for inter-connectivity and
professionalization and funding of attackers.

Researchers aim to address these new threats with the development of
novel methods (countermeasures) for defending networked systems. This is
challenging and important at the same time. One of the most important
advancements proposed by the community of security experts (both from
industry and academia) deals with new forms of traffic normalization or
active wardens, which allow to mitigate attacks, but do not offer a
comprehensive protection. Moreover, novel attacks target highly specific
features of the system to be exploited, for instance, vulnerabilities of
the hardware and its energy consumption and network side channels.

In this perspective, this special issue desires to foster the progress
in research on the development of novel defense methods in information
security, especially for sophisticated and networked/hyper-connected
systems, including those within the IoT and CPS.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

Novel and effective countermeasures (techniques against modern
threats, such as dynamic and adaptive countermeasures).

Methods that increase the efficiency and effectiveness of
countermeasures over the state-of-the-art.

Surveys of defense methods in current domains of information
security and surveys that systematize commonalities between different
types of countermeasures.

Evaluation of existing taxonomies and proposals for new taxonomies
in cyber defense.

Work that unifies terminological inconsistencies in cyber defense.

Work that reproduces existing experiments, i.e., that
confirms/disproves experimental results on the defense of networked
systems, and that additionally proposes experimentally verified
improvements.

Work discussing methodologies to collect data and samples for
modeling threats for the benefit of optimizing countermeasure design.

Work that discusses the underlying criteria for the design and
evaluation for cyber defense research testbeds.

Work discussing machine-learning-based approaches for revealing
unknown network-level threats.

Methodology for privacy, information sharing and collaborative work
in the context of cyber defense.

"Open science" for cyber defense.

Policy issues that influence cyber defense.

The FGCS' s submission system will be open for submissions to our
Special Issue from Nov 15th, 2019. When submitting your manuscript
please select the article type "VSI: Emerging Network Defense". Please
submit your manuscript before Jan 25th, 2020.

All submissions deemed suitable to be sent for peer review will be
reviewed by at least two independent reviewers. Once your manuscript is
accepted, it will go into production, and will be simultaneously
published in the current regular issue and pulled into the online
Special Issue. Articles from this Special Issue will appear in different
regular issues of the journal, though they will be clearly marked and
branded as Special Issue articles.

Please ensure you read the Guide for Authors before writing your
manuscript. The Guide for Authors and link to submit your manuscript is
available on the Journal's homepage at:
https://www.elsevier.com/journals/future-generation-computer-systems/0167-739x/guide-for-authors