The 2015 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) is just a few days away, happening from 8-11 February in San Diego, California, and the programme is really filled with quality sessions. This conference could not come at a better time as the steady stream of news stories about security incidents highlights the critical importance of this work. NDSS is a well-established venue for some of the best security researchers in the world to gather and discuss solutions to key security problems facing the Internet today.

Keynote Speaker

The featured keynote speaker this year is Stephen Farrell, a Research Fellow from Trinity College Dublin (TCD). In addition to his security work at TCD, Stephen is also a Security Area Director for the Internet Engineering Task Force. He will be talking about what the research community can do to help address the issues related to pervasive monitoring on the Internet. Stephen is one of the authors of RFC 7258 that defined pervasive monitoring as an attack.

NDSS Programme

The NDSS programme features a strong set of peer-reviewed research papers on key security topics. There are several sessions delving into the detection, analysis, prevention, and response to security issues found in systems today. There are also sessions focused on the unique security issues associated with specific classes of applications including social networks, cloud services, the mobile environment, and the web. Finally, there are sessions focused on privacy and authentication. The single-track nature of the conference, along with the carefully constructed agenda, results in a highly focused and productive set of research presentations.

Workshops

Rounding out the program will be a continuation of the successful workshops added for the first time at last years’ NDSS on the preceding Sunday. These workshops feature emerging research on focused topics and allow for more in-depth analysis and discussion around that topic.

The first workshop is on Security of Emerging Networking Technologies (SENT), and will address evolving security needs in the presence of new applications and technologies. Hot topics like the Internet of Things (IoT) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) are changing some of the traditional security challenges. There is even a discussion of attacks on autonomous cars on the agenda. There are two keynotes as a part of this workshop including “Living in a World of Decentralized Data” and “Security Challenges and Opportunities in the Future Internet.”

The second workshop is on Usable Security (USEC), which looks at one of the key impediments to the deployment and use of security processes and mechanisms, namely the human. It brings together researchers from a variety of fields for an interdisciplinary discussion on how to produce better security outcomes by considering human factors. Matthew Smith will be giving a keynote entitled “Experts Are Not Infallible - The Need for Usable System Security” in which he will use Transport Layer Security (TLS) to illustrate issues with usable security and privacy.

Join Us

All in all, NDSS 2015 promises to be an intense four days focused on one of the key challenges facing the Internet today, namely the security and privacy of the ecosystem. This research is one of the keys to rebuilding the confidence in the Internet that has been lost in recent years.

Stay tuned next week for further updates on this event, and if you are so inclined, it is not too late to join us from 8-11 February! Register online, join us at the Catamaran Resort Hotel and Spa in sunny San Diego, California, or watch for us online by following @ISOCtech on Twitter and using the #NDSS hashtag.