Call for Papers WCCI 2016 Special Session: Evolutionary Computation and Other Computational Intelligence Techniques for Cyber Security

Overview

The Internet of Things (IoT) and our cyber–physical environment bring great benefits by connecting People, Processes and Data. They offer an easier, safer, smarter, more productive and more prosperous lifestyle for everyone. Whether it is smart, connected homes caring for their elderly residents, driverless vehicles improving transport safety and efficiency or wearable personal medical technology, our cyber-enabled future looks bright. However, great opportunities also bring large risks. Cyber-enabled systems can be threatened by a wide variety of cyber-attacks from criminals, terrorists and hacktivists. As a consequence, cyber security is particularly important for cyber–physical systems, with the public and senior decision-makers becoming ever more aware of the dangers caused by the malicious exploitation of poorly-secured systems.

Evolutionary Computation and other Computational Intelligence techniques (EC&CI) have been successfully applied in various areas, such as computational biology, medical science, finance, engineering, etc. Cyber security is a key area where we can exploit the power of EC&CI. The importance of this special session is that, unlike other problem domains, the design of intelligent solutions for cyber security has to be resilient in the face of determined, sophisticated attackers who will target any adaptive system. Often, we see that it is the adaptive parts of a system – intelligent anti-virus or intrusion detection systems, adaptive network protocols, dynamic web content – that offer the best opportunities for an attacker. We hope that intelligent cyber security can secure the benefits to all from our cyber-connected world, and that our research, combining EC&CI with cyber security, will underpin our safe, secure and prosperous connected future..

Topics of Interest

This special session presents the latest research in EC&CI for cyber security, promoting an exchange of new ideas and exploring the potential of EC&CI techniques for cyber security. Original contributions that provide novel theories, techniques, architectures and solutions to challenging problems related to cyber security are very welcome for this Special Session. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

1. Bio-inspired cyber security architectures
2. Adaptive cloud security
3. Intelligent defences against privacy-invading technologies
4. Biometrics and evolutionary authentication
5. Insider threat detection
6. Prediction of attacks
7. Smart systems for risk management
8. Detection and analysis of malware 
9. Autonomous Security
10. Information and process security
11. Privacy and anonymity enhancing techniques
12. Adaptive, secure protocols

Submission

Please follow the IEEE CEC2016 instruction for authors and submit your paper via the IEEE CEC 2016 online submission system. Please specify that your paper is for the Special Session on Evolutionary Computation and Other Computational Intelligence Techniques for Cyber Security.

Important Dates

Paper Submission Deadline:    15 Jan 2016
Notification of Acceptance:    15 Mar 2016
Final Paper Submission Deadline:    15 Apr 2016

Organisers

Dr Hongmei He, Cranfield University, UK, h.he@cranfield.ac.uk
Professor Ashutosh Tiwari, Cranfield University, UK,  A.Tiwari@cranfield.ac.uk
Dr Jorn Mehnen, Cranfield University, j.mehnen@cranfield.ac.uk
Professor Tim Watson, University of Warwick, UK, tw@warwick.ac.uk
Professor Yaochu Jin, University of Surrey, yaochu.jin@surrey.ac.uk
Professor Bogdan Gabrys, University of Bournemouth, BGabrys@bournemouth.ac.uk

Biography of the Proposers

Dr Hongmei He is a lecturer in Cyber-Security for Manufacturing and Information Intelligence in the Manufacturing Informatics Centre at Cranfield University. She was awarded a PhD degree in Computer Science and MSc degree in Multimedia and Internet Computing by Loughborough University in 2006 and 2003 respectively. Dr He’s research focused on Computational Intelligence for a wide range of applications, such as data/information fusion, network-based data mining, non-linear regression, cognitive robotics, identification and wireless sensor networks. Recently, she put much attention on Cyber Security, and developed a new MSc course in Cyber Secured Manufacturing Informatics. She is particularly interested in data/information driven cyber security, and try to apply computational intelligence, in particular, bioinspired approaches for computer security, authentication and prediction of cyber attacker’s behaviour, capacity and intents. She has published more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences since 2004. Dr He has been an Editorial Board Member of Advances in Computing since 2011, the member of IEEE (Computer Science, Computational Intelligence, Cyber Security and Robotics societies) since 2005, and a representative of IEEE Ireland section since 2009. She also served as a committee member or session chair for some international conferences, such as IJCNN2015, IAENG ICAIA'09, WCCI2008, etc.

Professor Ashutosh Tiwari is Chair in Manufacturing Informatics and Head of the Manufacturing Informatics Centre at Cranfield University. His research focuses on the digitisation, simulation and optimisation of high-value manufacturing processes, such as wing manufacture and engine assembly. His current research has investigated the cyber security implications of advancements in manufacturing informatics. He is a fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), a fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), a fellow of the Higher Education Academy, treasurer of the World Federation on Soft Computing (WFSC) and steering committee member of the NAFEMS Optimisation Working Group. He has produced 236 research publications including 93 refereed journal papers, 93 refereed conference papers and 50 book chapters, edited books and workshop papers. He was awarded the IMechE Thatcher Bros Prize 2008/09 for the best journal paper in manufacturing. He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Design Engineering, a survey/review article editor of the Applied Soft Computing Journal, and an editorial board member of the IMechE Journal of Engineering Manufacture.

Dr Jorn Mehnen is Reader in Computational Manufacturing at Cranfield University, UK.  He is also Deputy Director of the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Through-life Engineering Services and Privatdozent at TU Dortmund, Germany. His expertise lies in the area of the application of Computer Science technologies to manufacturing through utilizing latest technology such as Cloud Manufacturing, Through Life Services Engineering and Evolutionary Computation.  Dr Mehnen is co-editor of the renowned CI journal Applied Soft Computing and regular co-organiser of the Evolutionary Computation in Practice track at GECCO. Dr Mehnen is author of 4 books, 13 book chapters, 32 top ranked journals and 57 proceedings papers.

Professor Tim Watson is the Director of the Cyber Security Centre at WMG within the University of Warwick. He is an advisor to various parts of the UK government and to several professional and standards bodies. Tim's current research includes EU funded projects on combating cyber-crime, UK MoD research into automated defence, insider threat and secure remote working, and research into the protection of infrastructure against cyber-attack. He is the Vice President (Academia) of the Trustworthy Software Initiative, a UK government sponsored project and a key deliverable of the UK National Cyber Security Programme. Tim was recently the Chair of the European Information Security Summit 2015 and is on the advisory board of the Journal of Cybersecurity. Tim is also a regular media commentator on digital forensics and cyber security.

Professor Yaochu Jin (M’98–SM’02) is a Professor in Computational Intelligence with the Department of Computer Science, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK, where he is the Head of the Nature Inspired Computing and Engineering Group. He is also a Finland Distinguished Professor awarded by Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation and Changjiang Distinguished Visiting Professor appointed by Ministry of Education, China. Prof Jin has (co)edited five books and three conference proceedings, authored a monograph, and (co)authored over 150 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. He has been granted eight US, EU and Japan patents. His current research is funded by EC FP7, UK EPSRC and industries, including Airbus, Bosch UK, HR Wallingford and Honda. He has delivered 20 invited keynote speeches at international conferences.

Prof Jin is an Associate Editor or Editorial Board Member of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CYBERNETICS, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NANOBIOSCIENCE, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COGNITIVE AND DEVELOPMENTAL SYSTEMS and IEEE COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE, Evolutionary Computation (MIT), BioSystems (Elsevier), Natural Computing (Springer), and Soft Computing (Springer).  Dr Jin is currently an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer and Vice President for Technical Activities of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. He was the recipient of the 2014 IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine Outstanding Paper Award and the Best Paper Award of the 2010 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. He is a Fellow of British Computer Society and Senior Member of IEEE.

Professor Bogdan Gabrys is a professor in Computational Intelligence at Bournemouth University (BU) since January 2003. He has founded and acted as a Director of Data Science Institute (2014- present), Smart Technology Research Centre (2007 - 2014) and Computational Intelligence Research Group (2003 - present) all hosted within the Faculty of Science and Technology at BU. His current research interests lay in a broad area of intelligent and biologically/nature inspired learning and complex adaptive systems and include a wide range of machine learning and hybrid intelligent techniques encompassing data and information fusion, learning and adaptation methods, multiple classifier and prediction systems, complex adaptive systems, processing and modelling of uncertainty in predictive analytics, pattern recognition, diagnostic analysis and decision support systems.
Among others, Prof Gabrys acts as the Chair (Academic Affairs) of KES International and is a Co-Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Knowledge Based & Intelligent Engineering Systems. He was co-ordinating a recently completed EU funded INFER project (http://www.infer.eu) focusing on robust adaptive predictive systems, a topic which is relevant to this special session. In the past he was a co-chairman of the Nature-inspired Data Technology focus group within an EU funded Coordination Action project on Nature-inspired Smart Information Systems (NiSIS). He was also a corresponding person for a Key Node in the European Network of Excellence on Intelligent Technologies for Smart Adaptive Systems (EUNITE) and a co-chairman of the Research Theory & Development Group on Integration of Methods. More information can be found at his personal web page: http://dec.bournemouth.ac.uk/staff/bgabrys/.