The 11th Annual Workshop on the Economic of Information Security (WEIS 2012)
Berlin, Germany, June 25-26, 2012


Information security and privacy continue to grow in importance, as threats
proliferate, privacy erodes, and attackers find new sources of value.
Yet the security of information systems and the privacy offered by them depends
on more than just technology. Each requires an understanding of the incentives
and trade-offs inherent to the behavior of people and organizations. As
society's dependence on information technology has deepened, policy-makers have
taken notice. Now more than ever, careful research is needed to
characterize accurately threats and countermeasures, in both the public and
private sectors.

The Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS) is the leading
forum for interdisciplinary scholarship on information security and privacy,
combining expertise from the fields of economics, social science, business, law,
policy, and computer science. Prior workshops have explored the role of
incentives between attackers and defenders of information systems, identified
market failures surrounding Internet security, quantified risks of personal data
disclosure, and assessed investments in cyber-defense. The 2012 workshop will
build on past efforts using empirical and analytic tools not only to understand
threats, but also to strengthen security and privacy through novel evaluations
of available solutions.


We encourage economists, computer scientists, legal scholar, business school
researchers, security and privacy specialists, as well as industry experts to
submit their research and participate by attending the workshop. Suggested
topics include (but are not limited to) empirical and theoretical studies of:

- Optimal investment in information security
- Models and analysis of online crime (including botnets, phishing, and spam)
- Risk management and cyber-insurance
- Security standards and regulation
- Cyber-security policy
- Security models and metrics
- Economics of privacy and anonymity
- Behavioral security and privacy
- Vulnerability discovery, disclosure, and patching
- Cyber-defense strategy and game theory
- Incentives for information sharing and cooperation


Submitted manuscripts should represent significant and novel research
contributions. WEIS has no formal formatting guidelines. Previous contributors
spanned fields from economics and psychology to computer science and law,
each with different norms and expectations about manuscript length and
formatting. Advisable rules of thumb include: using past WEIS accepted papers as
templates and adhering to your community's publication standards.

A selection of papers accepted to this workshop will be invited to appear in an
edited volume targeted to policy-makers, managers, researchers, and
practitioners.

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IMPORTANT DATES

Submissions due: 24 February 2012
Notification of acceptance: 13 April 2012
Final papers due: 1 June 2012
Workshop: 25-26 June 2012


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PROGRAM CHAIR

* Rainer Boehme - University of Muenster

GENERAL CHAIRS
* Gert G. Wagner - DIW Berlin
* Nicola Jentzsch - DIW Berlin

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

* Alessandro Acquisti - Carnegie Mellon University
* Ross Anderson - University of Cambridge
* Rainer Boehme - University of Muenster
* L. Jean Camp - Indiana University
* Jonathan Cave - RAND Europe
* Huseyin Cavusoglu - University of Texas at Dallas
* Nicolas Christin - Carnegie Mellon University
* Benjamin Edelman - Harvard Business School
* Michel van Eeten - Delft University of Technology
* Jeremy Epstein - SRI International
* Allan Friedman - Brookings Institution
* Neil Gandal - Tel Aviv University
* Dan Geer - In-Q-Tel
* Lawrence Gordon - University of Maryland
* Jens Grossklags - Penn State University
* Thorsten Holz - Ruhr-University Bochum
* Jean-Pierre Hubaux - EPFL Lausanne
* Nicola Jentzsch - DIW Berlin
* M. Eric Johnson - Dartmouth Tuck School of Business
* Martin Loeb - University of Maryland
* Kanta Matsuura - University of Tokyo
* Tyler Moore - Wellesley College
* Andrew Odlyzko - University of Minnesota
* David Pym - University of Aberdeen
* Brent Rowe - RTI International
* Stuart Schechter - Microsoft Research
* Bruce Schneier - BT Counterpane
* Richard Sullivan - Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
* Rahul Telang - Carnegie Mellon University
* Catherine Tucker - MIT
* Liad Wagman - Illinois Institute of Technology
* Rick Wash - Michigan State University