Visionaries Needed

CRA Conference on
"Grand Research Challenges in Information Security and Assurance"

Airlie House, Warrenton, Virginia
November 16-19, 2003

Computing and IT technologies have become pervasive. This same 
infrastructure is growing more complex as the underlying 
computational and communication resources grow in speed and capacity. 
Every vision of future technology includes predictions of ubiquitous 
computing and networking, including embedded, portable, and 
distributed systems in every aspect of our infrastructure. Computing 
will continue to change the way we do business, interact with 
government, entertain ourselves, communicate, keep records, control 
our infrastructures and services, execute law enforcement and 
national defense, and conduct research and education.

Coupled with these changes, we face threats of massive disruption and 
denial, loss of privacy, alteration of critical information, and new 
forms of undesirable IT-based activity. Threats from criminals, 
anarchists and extremists, random hackers, and cyberterrorists (among 
others) continue to grow even as we put more reliance on our 
computing infrastructure. Yet most of the money, attention, and 
energy in information security and information assurance has been 
focused on incremental patches and updates to existing systems rather 
than on seeking fundamental advances.

In 2002, the Computing Research Association sponsored its first 
"Grand Research Challenges in Computer Science and Engineering." This 
was the first in a series of highly non-traditional conferences where 
the goal is to define important questions rather than expose current 
research. Grand Challenges meetings seek "out-of-the-box" thinking to 
expose some of the exciting, deep challenges yet to be met in 
computing research. Because of the clear importance and pressing 
needs in information security and assurance, the Computing Research 
Association's second "Grand Research Challenges Conference" will be 
devoted to defining technical and social challenges in information 
security and assurance.

We are seeking scientists, educators, business people, futurists, and 
others who have some vision and understanding of the big challenges 
(and accompanying advances) that should shape the research agenda in 
this field over the next few decades. These meetings are not 
structured as traditional conferences with scheduled presentations, 
but rather as highly participatory meetings exposing important themes 
and ideas. As such, this is not a conference for security specialists 
alone:  We seek to convene a diverse group from a variety of fields 
and at all career stages - we seek insight and vision wherever it may 
reside.

Attendance is limited to 50 people and is by invitation only. If you 
are interested in attending, please submit a two-page (or less) 
statement of two or three examples of a "grand research challenge" 
problem in the IS/IA area to  by September 17, 
2003. The organizing committee will invite prospective attendees 
based on these submissions. Note that individuals invited must commit 
to attending for the entire three-day conference (beginning Sunday at 
6 pm, ending after lunch on Wednesday.)

Please submit your paper as an attachment in plain text (no PDF or 
Word documents!)  Include a brief biographical statement sketching 
your background at the end (maximum one page).

At the top of the first page, please provide the following information:

Name
Affiliation
Street Address
Room No.
City, State, Zip Code
E-mail
Telephone No.

The conference will be held in the executive retreat environment of 
Airlie House in Warrenton, Virginia (30 miles from Washington-Dulles 
airport). In addition to the formal sessions, two afternoons will be 
set aside for free time so that participants may continue discussion 
in small, informal groups.

CRA has applied to the National Science Foundation for travel and 
lodging support to cover expenses of some participants, where 
necessary. When you submit your paper, please indicate whether you 
need to be considered for travel and/or lodging support. We have 
explicitly budgeted for some participants from outside the United 
States, and we encourage submissions from around the world.

More information on the CRA Grand Challenges Conferences may be found 
on the WWW at >

Organizing Committee:
Eugene H. Spafford, Purdue University and Computing Research Association
     (Organizing Committee Chair)
Richard A. DeMillo, Georgia Institute of Technology
     (Organizing Committee Co-Chair)
David Aucsmith, Microsoft Corporation
Andrew Bernat, Computing Research Association
Steve Crocker, Shinkuro, Inc.
David Farber, Carnegie Mellon University
Virgil Gligor, University of Maryland
Sy Goodman, Georgia Institute of Technology
Anita Jones, University of Virginia
Susan Landau, Sun Laboratories
Peter Neumann, SRI
David Patterson, University of California, Berkeley
Fred Schneider, Cornell University
Douglas Tygar, University of California, Berkeley
William Wulf, National Academy of Engineering and University of Virginia