 | ACOD 2023: A Conference on Defense 2023 AppianHQ, 7950 Jones Branch Dr, McLean, VA 22102 McLean, VA, United States, October 25-27, 2023 |
| Conference website | https://artintoscience.com/ |
| Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=acod2023 |
| Abstract registration deadline | August 18, 2023 |
| Submission deadline | October 6, 2023 |
A Conference on Defense (ACOD)
A Conference on Defense has two primary areas of focus:
- Pushing the Art into a Science
- Glorifying the Defense.
Push the Art into a Science: Creating a Professional Discipline
To mature our practice, we need to be able to share our methodologies in a systematic and consistent way.
We have many professionals in the security industry, but do not have a professional discipline. We’d like to philosophically discuss concepts in security, push them forward, and model them.
Glorify the Defense: Tools, Techniques, and Ideas People Can Leave the Conference with and Implement
Security conferences glorify the attacker, and accept attack-oriented talks. We’d like to put defense on a pedestal and take in talks that interest us - operational talks on defense.
As a field, we need practitioners to offer implementable ideas and or reference implementations to reduce the amount of work that someone has to do to implement what they learn.
ACoD is a working conference
In the "Glorify the Defense" (operations) track we will have talks of interest on various investigations and case studies on the one hand, and tools and ideas used to defend our environments on the other.
The "Push the art into a science" (philosophy) track will be dedicated to working tracks, where the members introduce their own concepts, and then discuss specifics. Most importantly, finish the day with a summary that can be used to push our field into the future.
We want to get more out of ACoD:
Often, the best value we as attendees get out of a conference is personal relationships that form. We’d like to generate more of this value.
Some of us are introverts, some are shy. Regardless, it is hard to meet too many people in conferences, and see how we can help each other. We will work to address this by building more discussion into the agenda, such as networking opportunities, small working groups, and other similar ideas, into the DNA of how the conference will run.
Get to Know Our Convention!
Not sure if Art into Science is for you? Check out our Youtube channel below to view presentations from last year’s conference, or follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date with the latest news from the Art into Science conference!
Submission Guidelines
We invite you to participate in Art into Science and submit a talk to one of the two conference tracks.
- Operations Track
- Philosophy Track
Operations Track
We’d like to put defense on a pedestal and take in talks that interest us – operational talks on defense. As a field, we need practitioners to offer implementable ideas and or reference implementations to reduce the amount of work that someone has to do to implement what they learn.
Topics of interest include:
- Threat Intelligence
- Attack Profiles
- Detection Systems
- Case Studies, Tools, and Techniques
- Insider Threat
- User Behavior Analytics
- Fraud Mitigation
- Operationalizing Security
- Metrics
- Scalable Security Engineering
- Security Response
- SDL
Audience: Please think of the audience as your peers, experts in their field, who have been punching miscreants and building defense systems for at least 15 years. We are looking to see what you do, how you do it, and how others can replicate or further advance your efforts. While new material is preferred, we are very happy to see your implementation, research, investigations, and use cases, even if others have done it before, just please do not give an introductory talk.
Philosophical/Art into Science Track:
The Philosophy Track for Art Into Science is unlike most other conferences in that there is a high degree of interaction expected among speakers and attendees. In fact, one of the expected outputs are documents with authorship credit that include attendees that contributed during the conference.
To this end, the CFP for the Philosophy Track encourages submitters to consider the following to increase your chances of getting your submission accepted:
- Build upon other talks given in previous years
- Create space/opportunities for attendees to contribute to your topic
- Orient towards a "Guide-on-the-Side" style talk over "Sage-on-the-Stage"
You can review some of the past talks and topics on our YouTube channel.
This track will run the full duration of the conference.
Speakers: Speakers are strongly encouraged to stay through the week to facilitate discussions on their topic.
Audience: Please think of yourselves as contributors having something to offer but needing a venue and structure to facilitate your ability to express your thoughts and experience. The speakers aren’t the only ones with content. We are looking for your thinking on how we can build what we already know into a discipline or to learn of something new which we haven’t heard before.
Previous documents that were created by attendees include the following:
- Professionalization Framework
- Product Testing Framework
- Hazard Assessment Framework / Forecasting Framework
- Near Misses
Talk and Discussion Guidelines
Discussions need to be of a nature that:
- Identifies first principles.
- Models the results.
But most importantly:
- Makes sure the resulting models are useful and usable.
Some things to avoid:
- Stays away from statements such as "we should all use Linux" or "this wouldn’t happen if people patched their systems."
- Mentions of Sun Tzu are not allowed in lectures, unless they are new, previously unseen 0day quotes.
- Purely academic topics such as: "5% faster crypto!"