EuroUSEC 2024

Keynote Speakers

Dr. Rebecca Balebako

Talk Abstract: Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) enable amazing use cases from healthcare research to fraud prevention, while protecting personal data. But are policy-makers and academics focusing on the right solutions? This talk delves into how we define PETs and why that matters. What are the adoption challenges of PETs across small, medium, and large companies in Europe? Are PETs only relevant to companies building AI models? We'll dissect key criteria for selecting PETs and explore the pitfalls of promoting one technology over another. We'll also highlight key areas of research that might enable data protection in medium-sized companies. 

Biography: Dr. Rebecca Balebako has been working on privacy since 2010. She has helped start-ups, large tech companies, and specialized government agencies define strategies for machine learning and privacy. Rebecca has published numerous academic papers on usable privacy and security. Dr. Balebako is also an IAPP Fellow of Information Privacy (CIPP/E and CIPT) and is trained in AI Governance and Machine Learning. She holds a Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy, focusing on privacy, as well as degrees in Software Engineering and Math. As a former lead of the Google Privacy Red Team, she improved the privacy infrastructure and reduced risk for terabytes of data, thousands of machine learning models, and hundreds of third-party apps. Previous work on AI led to improvements in early speech recognition as well as a framework for responsible face recognition.

Prof. Awais Rashid

Talk Abstract: Digital technologies are becoming pervasive in society, from online shopping and social interactions to finance, banking, and transportation. With a future vision of smart cities, driven by a real-time, data-driven, digital economy, privacy is paramount. It is critical to engendering trust in the digital fabric on which society relies and is enshrined as a fundamental human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and regulations such as GDPR.

Significant efforts have been made to provide users with more agency in understanding, controlling, and assuring the way their data and information are processed and shared. However, this ability to control, understand, and assure is not equitably experienced across society. For instance, individuals from lower-income groups often have to share devices to access services that may include sensitive information. In the case of victims of intimate partner violence, an innocuous app (such as Find My Phone) or digital device (such as a smart doorbell) may be used to monitor their activities and there are significant risks in using online reporting tools for fear of traceability. Such vulnerable and marginalised populations have nuanced privacy and information control needs as well as threat models. These needs and requirements are not typically foregrounded to software developers. The challenge is compounded by the fact that developers are neither privacy experts nor typically have the training, tools, support, and guidance to design for the diverse privacy needs of marginalised and vulnerable groups.

In this talk, I will discuss insights from an ongoing multi-year programme of research on understanding the privacy requirements of such populations and highlight a research agenda on how to support software developers in systematically addressing them.

Biography: Awais Rashid is Professor of Cyber Security at the University of Bristol. His research spans cyber security and software engineering, with a particular focus on cyber-physical systems security, software security and usable security and privacy. He is Director of the UK’s National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online (REPHRAIN) and Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Trust, Identity, Privacy and Security in Large-Scale Infrastructures. He is also the lead and editor-in-chief of CyBOK, the Cyber Security Body of Knowledge. He also leads research on readiness of software engineers and developers to work with new secure hardware as part of the Digital Security by Design programme. He also previously led projects as part of the UK Research Institute on Trustworthy Industrial Control Systems (RITICS), the UK Research Institute on Socio-technical Cyber Security (RISCS) and the National Centre of Excellence on Cyber Security of Internet of Things (PETRAS). He was also a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute (2018-2021).

Call for Papers

We invite you to submit a paper and join us in Karlstad, Sweden, at EuroUSEC 2024.

We welcome submissions containing unpublished original work describing research, visions, or experiences in all areas of usable security and privacy. We also welcome the systematization of knowledge with a clear connection to usable security and privacy. We welcome a variety of research methods, including both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Note that All submissions must clearly relate to human aspects of security or privacy. We won't accept papers on security or privacy that don't address usability or human factors. The same applies to usability or human factors papers that do not address security or privacy.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• usable security and privacy implications or solutions for specific domains (such as IoT, ehealth, and vulnerable populations)
• methodologies for usable security and privacy research
• field studies of security or privacy technology
• longitudinal studies of deployed security or privacy features
• new applications of existing privacy/security models or technology
• innovative security or privacy functionality and design
• usability evaluations of new or existing security or privacy features
• security testing of new or existing usability features
• lessons learned from the deployment and use of usable privacy and security features
• reports of failed usable privacy/security studies or experiments, with the focus on the lessons learned from such experience
• papers with negative results
• reports of replicating previously published important studies and experiments
• psychological, sociological, cultural, or economic aspects of security and privacy
• studies of administrators or developers and support for security and privacy
• studies on the adoption or acceptance of security or privacy technologies
• systematization of knowledge papers
• impact of organizational policy or procurement decisions on security and privacy

We aim to provide a venue for researchers at all stages of their careers and at all stages of their projects.

The submissions can be either standard-length papers (at most 16 pages) or short papers (up to 8 pages), reporting mature work. All papers will use the one-column submission format (See Submission Instructions: Microsoft Word, Latex: use the “manuscript” call to create a single column format) and bibliography and appendices are excluded from the page count. Using supplementary appendices, authors can include study materials (e.g., surveys, interview guides, etc.) that would otherwise occupy valuable space within the body of the paper. Reviewers are not required to read appendices, so your paper should be self-contained without them. ACM also allows the publication of additional supplemental materials and we want to encourage authors to take advantage of this option to provide research artifacts (e.g., builds of their own software used in the study).

Similar to last year, EuroUSEC 2024 proceedings volume will be a part of the International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS) published by ACM.

It is mandatory for at least one author of each accepted paper to attend and present the paper in person. In certain circumstances, people who cannot travel may present their papers virtually.

Important Dates