The 3rd Workshop on Security Information Workers
Hyatt Regency - Santa Clara, CA
July 12, 2017

Call for Papers

The human element is often considered the weakest element in security. Although many kinds of humans interact with systems that are designed to be secure, one particular type of human is especially important, the security information worker. Security information workers include:
  • Software developers, who design and build software that manages and protects sensitive information;
  • Security and system administrators, who deploy and manage security-sensitive software and hardware systems;
  • IT professionals whose decisions have impact on end users’ security and privacy;
  • Intelligence analysts, who collect and analyze data about security matters to understand information and make predictions; and
  • Security consultants and educators, who provide guidance to individuals and organizations on practicing good security behaviors and implementing security technologies
This workshop aims to develop and stimulate discussion about security information workers. We will consider papers including, but not limited to:
  • Empirical studies of security information workers, including experiments, field studies, and surveys;
  • New tools designed to assist security information workers;
  • Infrastructure for better understanding security information workers;
  • Information visualization and other techniques designed to help security information workers do their jobs;
  • Evaluations of tools and techniques for security information workers.
Much security research could be considered about security information workers; for instance, tools that automatically find defects in program code could be construed to help software developers. However, successful submissions to this workshop will explicitly be informed by an understanding of how security information workers do their jobs, and the results will explicitly address how we understand security information workers.
We solicit papers from 4-10 pages describing new research contributions in this area, as well as work in progress and preliminary results. The length of the paper should reflect the size of the contribution. Use the SOUPS paper template for submissions, and submissions do not need to be anonymized. Workshop paper presentations will be followed by time for discussion and feedback amongst attendees. Submissions may be made at https://wsiw2017.usenix.hotcrp.com/.

Keynote speaker:

Masha Sedova, Elevate Security

Important Dates

Paper submission deadlineSunday, May 28, 2017 (Deadline extended!)
NotificationMonday, June 12, 2017
WorkshopJuly 12, 2017

Submission Site

Please submit your submission to our HotCRP.

Organizing Committee

  • Yasemin Acar, CISPA, Saarland University
  • Sascha Fahl, CISPA, Saarland University
  • Julie Haney, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
  • Heather Richter Lipford, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Venue and Registration

The workshop is colocated with the 13th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, please refer to the conference website for further information and registration.