Earlier this month, the National Coordination Office (NCO) for the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program — the Federal program that provides a framework and mechanisms for coordination among 15 Federal agencies that support networking and information technology research and development — issued a Call for Papers for the National Symposium on Moving Target Research. This daylong symposium, which comes on the heels of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Trustworthy Cyberspace: Strategic Plan for the Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Program report published in December, “intends to bring together and publish the work of the Moving Target cybersecurity research community to provide a basis for building on the current state of the art.”

A number of colleagues from our community are serving on the organizing committee: Matt Bishop, University of California, Davis; Deb Frincke, National Security Agency; Matt Gaston, Carnegie Mellon University; Sushil Jajodia, George Mason University; Tom Longstaff, National Security Agency; Ed Rhyne, Department of Homeland Security; Bill Scherlis, Carnegie Mellon University; Cliff Wang, Army Research Office; and Jeannette Wing, Carnegie Mellon University.

According to the Call for Papers (following the link):

In December 2011, the White House, in cooperation with the NITRD Program, released the NSTC report “Trustworthy Cyberspace: Strategic Plan for the Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Program.” One of the research themes outlined in this plan was Moving Target (MT), research and development that results in the presentation of a dynamic attack surface to an adversary, increasing the work factor necessary to successfully attack and exploit a cyber target. Throughout the Federal government, research related to MT has been funded since 2009, but there is no single venue where this work is presented and published. The Symposium on Moving Target Research intends to bring together and publish the work of the MT community to provide a basis for building on the current state of the art…

The symposium will take place at the Historic Inns of Annapolis (Md.), outside Washington, DC, on June 11, 2012. It seeks to address the central question,

“is there scientific evidence to show that moving target techniques are a substantial improvement in the defense of cyber systems (a game changer),” including how to develop better measures of effectiveness and performance specific to moving target techniques. MT topics of interest include, but are not restricted to:

 

• Dynamic network servicesShow citation box
• Game theoretic approachesShow citation box
• Virtual machinesShow citation box
• Cloud computingShow citation box
• Dynamic executionShow citation box
• Automated response actionsShow citation box
• Situational awarenessShow citation box
• MT transparencyShow citation box
• Work factor metricsShow citation box
• Risk analysisShow citation box
• End-to-end securityShow citation box
• ResiliencyShow citation box
• Intrusion ToleranceShow citation box
• Measures of effectiveness

To be considered, papers must be emailed as PDFs to mtr-symposium@sei.cmu.edu by 6pm EDT on April 2, 2012. They are requested to be 7-12 pages in length, in 11-point font size, including figures and references. They may not substantially overlap with papers that have been published or are simultaneously being submitted to journals or conference proceedings.

Papers will be subject to peer-review and selection based on technical rigor, application of scientific method, and contribution to the overall area of moving target. There will be an accompanying poster session open for researchers and companies that would like to highlight or demonstrate available MT technologies.

Authors will be notified April 20th. Poster abstracts and camera-ready papers will be due by May 4 and May 18, respectively.

To learn more, check out the Call for Papers as it appears in the Federal Register. And see a related article in Nextgov.

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)