“Advances in Self Protecting Systems”

Call for paper

Effectively protecting computer systems from cyber-attacks is a challenging task due to their large scale and the heterogeneity of the underlying hardware and software components. Furthermore, when trying to defend from an attack, the time factor is critical, and any non-guided human resolution attempt could introduce a significant stress and delay to the execution of the proper response. This situation provides the attackers more time to accomplish their objectives.

Several organizations, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), have released guidelines and best practices to manage cyber-security related risk (e.g., the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 1.1). However, despite a growing interest in the area in the last 4-5 years, automation of cyber-security operations is still at its early stages.

Automatically defending a computer system encompasses a large number of activities, that range from data capture, management and analysis, to automated decision making and automated system operations.

In this special issue, we solicit high quality contributions that fit with the overarching idea of creating a fully automated protection system based on the Monitor, Analyze, Plan, Execute (MAPE) loop, control theory, bio-inspired solutions, Self-Regenerative Systems, and the like.

Selected papers of the 1st Int. Workshop on Self-Protecting Systems (SPS-2019) are invited to submit an extended version of their work.

Topics of interest for the special issue are:

• Distributed and secure data collection and storage for sensing/monitoring
• Automated Feature Selection approaches to reduce data dimensionality on cyber-security relevant data
• Techniques for automatic correlation of data streams
• Self-Evolving Anomaly-Based and Signature-Based Network/Host Intrusion Detection Systems
• Attack and defense modeling for threats detection and risk management
• Self-Evolving Model-based and Model-free Intrusion response
• Attack and defense modeling for reactive and proactive intrusion response
• Foundational results for self-protecting systems: Algorithms, artificial intelligence, biological-inspired techniques, control theory, machine learning, operation research, probability and stochastic processes, queueing theory, rule-based systems, and socially-inspired techniques
• Software engineering for self-protecting systems: System architectures, services, components and platforms, Goal specification and policies, modeling of security-level agreements, behavior enforcement, IT governance, and security-driven IT management
• Self-organizing and organic computing for self-protecting systems: Self-organization principles and organic computing principles borrowed from systems theory, control theory, game theory, decision theory, social theories, biological theories, etc. ; Self-organization, emergent behavior, decentralized control, individual and social/organizational learning, scalability, robustness, goal- and norm-governed behavior, online self-integration for trustworthy self-organizing and organic systems; Infrastructures and architectures for self-organizing systems and organic computing systems.
• Implementation of prototypes that integrate cutting edge technologies, e.g., Software Defined Networks, Cloud/Fog/edge computing, Artificial Intelligence, micro-services
• Holistic perspective on self-protecting systems i.e., researches that consider the overall picture and propose novel software architectures, frameworks and technologies to ease the realization of self-protecting systems.

Guest Editors

Emiliano Casalicchio

Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) and Blekinge Institute of Technology (Sweden),

Department of Computer Science

[email protected]

+39 3479374437

Stefano Iannucci

Mississippi State University,

Computer Science and Engineering

[email protected]

+1 662-694-0755

Byron J. Williams

University of Florida

Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering

[email protected]

+1 352-229-0091

Deadlines

• Publication of the CFP for the special issue: April 15th 2019
• Invitation of selected papers from the workshop: April 15th 2019
• Submission deadline: July 15th 2019
• Acceptance Notification: September 30 2019
• Second round of submission (e.g. after major/minor revisions): January 7, 2020
• Acceptance Notification: February 29, 2020

Submission Instructions

The FGCS\’ submission system will be open for submissions to our Special Issue from June 15th, 2019. When submitting your manuscript please select the article type \”VSI: Self-Protecting Systems\”. Please submit your manuscript before Jul 15th, 2019.

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 see an example here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/science-of-the-total-environment/special-issue/10SWS2W7VVV  

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

Inquiries, including questions about appropriate topics, may be sent electronically to [email protected]