Call for Papers

IEEE Transactions on Reliability Special Section on Information, System, and Software Assurance: Research & Practice

Background

In recent years, smart phones, tablets, and cloud computing are converging in the new, rapidly growing field of mobile cloud computing. Our dependence on software-enabled systems has only become more pronounced. This dependence poses new challenges to reliable, secure, trustworthy software development. Not only are such systems employed in safety-critical domains such as defense, nuclear power control, and space exploration, but they are also vital in areas such as finance and medical information management, where privacy and fidelity are of paramount importance. A failure of such a system or a loss of data integrity can have disastrous consequences. Accordingly, the demand has greatly increased for new and better techniques to assure the correct and safe operation of these systems, and to protect the information they contain.

Unfortunately, the ever-growing complexity of such systems and the software that controls them not only makes it much more difficult to guarantee their quality, but also introduces more avenues for malicious attacks, intrusion, and data loss. To overcome these challenges, an approach is called for on two fronts: the advancement of existing methodologies for ensuring the safe, correct, and secure operation of software-enabled systems; and the cultivation of new techniques that aim to accomplish the same goal.

To address these needs, this special section calls for novel applications of both established and emerging techniques for the assurance, protection, and trustworthiness of information, software, and systems. Reviews and case studies which address state-of-art research and state-of-practice industry experiences are also welcomed.

Topics

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Issues and challenges related to information, system, and software assurance in small or large systems, such as mobile devices and cloud computing platforms. The issues may include monitoring, auditing, verification, validation, testing, security evaluation, intrusion prevention, data protection, vulnerability discovery, penetration analysis, malware behavior analysis, maintenance, disaster recovery, regulatory and standards compliance, etc.
Application and evaluation of assurance and trustworthy computing techniques against mobile or large complex systems and software (reliability-, security-, safety-, or mission-critical systems, embedded systems, open source applications, etc.).
Reports on successful experiences or limitations of techniques for information, system, and software quality assurance.
Metrics and measurements for trustworthiness, security, system, and software quality assurance.
Tool support for system and software quality assurance.
Empirical evaluations or industrial case studies that guide future research directions.

Submission Information

We welcome high quality submissions that are original work, not published or currently submitted elsewhere. We also encourage significant extensions to conference papers, as long as the submitted paper is fully new. Submit manuscripts directly to the Managing Editor. We accept only electronic submissions, so email is the preferred method. Submit your original pdf or doc(x) file to jrupe@ieee.org, indicating your submission to this special section by its title.

Important Target Dates

March 1, 2013	Paper submission deadline
June 1, 2013	First round notification
August 1, 2013	Revised submission deadline
Oct 15, 2013	Final notification

Guest Editor: Shiuhpyng Winston Shieh, Dept. of Computer Science, National Chiao Tung University, ssp@cs.nctu.edu.tw