Mini Tracks – Call for Paper  &  Workshops

Matthew Dosmann


Dan Shoemaker

If you would be interested in preparing and chairing a mini track, please contact the Conference Director, Sue Nugus outlining your suggested topic.

Counter-insurgency and Asymmetric Approaches to Information Warfare

Mission Assurance

Mini track on Counter-insurgency and Asymmetric Approaches to Information Warfare
Track co-chairs: LTC Matthew Dosmann, US Army Reserve and Dr. Dan Shoemaker, University of Detroit, USA

.PDF of Counterinsurgency

This track solicits papers that will explore the development of IA strategies from a counterinsurgency perspective. Crafting an effective IA strategy depends upon using a model that accurately represents the environment. While no model is perfect, it is important to utilize one that includes all the actors and their interactions with each other and the environment.

Current IA models tend to focus on a limited subset of actors and activities and therefore fail to represent cyberspace activity accurately. Current models represent adversarial cyberspace activity along the lines of business cases, criminal activity, or as a point along the continuum of nation-state conflict (eg. Espionage, attacks as part of a war, etc.). Each of these approaches reflect one part of adversarial cyber-activity but fail to produce a model that represents an aggregation of all the types of adversarial activity we see in cyberspace.

What is needed is a model that effectively aggregates adversarial activity while maintaining the complexity of the interaction between actors and the environment. There is a conflict model that captures these issues of complexity and aggregation: Insurgency. Insurgency models take into account the economic, military, law enforcement, and social realms of activity. The application of complexity theory to the insurgency shows us that the various parts are linked and any effective counter-insurgency strategy has to be comprehensive and coordinated.

A broad and indicative list of topics and themes is listed below that we hope might be included in submissions, this is not an exclusive list but rather a guide to some of the relevant issues of the day:

·         Emerging legal constructs to deal with adversarial cyber activity

·         Emerging governmental constructs to deal with adversarial cyber activity

·         Emerging military constructs to deal with adversarial cyber activity

·         The tension of governmental responsibilities vice civil liberty concerns in cyber-space

·         The applicability of the traditional tenets of warfare in cyberspace.

·         What is the proper use of cyberspace in support of traditional military operations?

For mini track submission details, see the call for papers page.

Mini track on Mission Assurance
Track chair: Dr Michael Grimaila, Air Force Institute of Technology, Dayton, Ohio, USA

.PDF of Mission Assurance

Virtually all organizations have embedded information technologies into their core processes as a means to increase operational efficiency, improve decision quality, and reduce costs. This dependence can place the mission at risk when the loss of a critical information resource occurs.  Risk assessment and situational awareness are essential to responding to a cyber crisis, as is the consideration of what missions are affected, potential cascade effects, and prioritization of restoration activities.

This track focuses upon current or proposed methods, tools, and technologies that can be deployed to improve mission assurance.

Topics of interest to this mini-track focus include, but are not limited to:

·            Mission assurance

·            Mission risk analysis

·            Mission representation

·            Mission dependency analysis

·            Mission impact assessment

·           Military decision making process

For mini track submission details, see the call for papers page.

Michael Grimaila

A selection of the best papers will have an opportunity to submit their work for publication in the prestigious International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics published by Inderscience UK (ISSN:1751-1911X)

Read the
Author Guidelines

Purchase previous conference proceedings  The proceedings for this conference are listed on the Index to Scientific and Technical Proceedings (ISTP/ISI Proceedings), the Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings (ISSHP) and the Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings (ISSHP/ISI Proceedings).

Updated 24 August 2009