A Retrospection of the First iCAST Conference

Michael Kao 2007/1/31

In addition to the reviews of the origin, design, and delivery of the 1^st iCAST Conference, this memorandum will also analyze its impact as well as set up considerations and references for future iCAST conferences.

1. Date and Place

Back in September 2006, under the guidance of iCAST Director Lee and the coordination of the iCAST project office and our collaboration partners, CMU and UCB teams, the date of this conference was set from January 8^th to 10^th of 2007. The teams decided to hold this conference at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST). We managed to reserve the conference hall IB101, International Building, for both January 8th and 9th, but not on the 10th. Eventually, we settled for the RB105 Research Building for the January 10th morning conference and IB 202 for the afternoon tutorial on the same day. In addition, we also reserved a block of rooms in the Taipei Leader Hotel for our conference guests from the United States.

2. Themes

After a few rounds of discussion among the CMU, UCB, and Taiwanese teams, we agreed on the conference theme of “Crossing Boundaries: International Themes for Computer Security in Academia, Industry, & Services”, which was originally proposed by Dr. Doug Tygar of UCB. As we are moving into the 21^st century, a trend of “Crossing Boundaries” continues to grow throughout the global community: in academia, industry and services. Globalization is indeed a major trend. iCAST was built upon this trend and spirit, which led to our conference’s international theme: Crossing Boundaries for Computer Security in Academia, Industry and Services.

3. Keynote Speakers

In the very beginning, we have invited Professor Douglas Maughan from the Department of Homeland Security (USA) to be our conference keynote speaker. However, he could not attend because of his tight schedule. Fortunately, we were able to invite Professors Pradeep Khosla and S. Shankar Sastry to be keynote speakers for the 1^st and the 2^nd conference days. Currently, Professor Pradeep Khosla is the Dean of the College of Engineering at CMU and Professor S. Shankar Sastry is the Director at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS, http://www.citris-uc.org) at the University of California, Berkeley. They outlined the trend of Information Security and collaboration status of Taiwan with CMU and UCB. In addition, Professor Der-Tsai Lee, the Director of iCAST and the Institute of Information Science at the Academic Sinica, opened the conference’s first session and closed its last session by chairing a panel discussion and making closing remarks.

4. Technical Program

We have an excellent program covering a variety of topics ranging from privacy issues, remote authentication, and formal verification on information security to wireless sensor networks, RFID, intrusion detection, and video surveillance networks. We have invited university professors, field researchers, and young scholars from both Taiwan and the United States, thanks to the Program Committee’s efforts, coordinated by our two program co-chairs: Professors Doug Tygar from the University of California at Berkeley and Tsuhan Chen from Carnegie Mellon University. Additionally, we are also grateful for the State Minister, Dr. Ferng-Ching Lin’s support. He is also this conference’s Honorary Chair.

This program is designed with a balance of both presenting Information Security technologies and involving members from all iCAST organizations. Professors Khosla, Sastry, Chen, Tygar, Adrain Perrig and Raj Rajkumar of CMU, and Professors Vern Paxson and John Kubiatowicz of UCB were this conference’s main presenters. In addition, we also had presentations by Professors Yeali Sun of NTU and Nai-Wei Lo of NTUST, Mr. Greg Wu and Mr. Larry Kao of III, and Dr. Yao-Jen Chang of ITRI as well as student presentations, which are summarized in the next session. Furthermore, we invited PIs from iCAST organizations to chair all 10 sessions. Please refer to the conference guide and proceedings for the program details.

5. Student Presentations

There were student presentations from both Taiwan and the United States. For the first part, both CMU and UCB had sent three to five students. For the second part, we have invited student representatives from each 300 series project to contribute one 20-minute presentation, which was a total of six presentations with seven Taiwanese students involved. These presentations were designed to provide students opportunities to make technical presentations in English at big conferences. Most of them presented well. However, some lacked skills in areas such as time control and presenting in English. We will review this policy for future conferences to set higher standards or possibly use poster sessions.

6. Tutorial

On the third afternoon, Professor Vern Paxson of UCB gave us a three-hour tutorial of “Internet Worms.” By starting with the topic “What is a Worm,” he introduced its history, which included Morris Worm, Code Red, and “Better” worms. He then addressed the issues of detection and defense, and finally explained the transformation of the basic threat. His presentation not only drew a full audience but also invited lots of questions and interactions. This session was not over until 15 minutes past the scheduled time. It was a big success.

7. Registration and Attendance

For the attendance data, this conference was a great success. We had more than 300 pre-registered, more than 300 attended, and more than 250 attendees during peak hours. Even on the third day, we still had about 150 in the audience, and more than a 100 attended the tutorial.

(Table 1 – Conference Registration and Attendance)

Many iCAST members and 24 of 164 pre-registered attendees from the academic group are professors. These professors as well as many field engineers and managers attended are Information Security experts of Taiwan.

For our future conferences, we should consider mechanisms to reduce the no-show percentage, which was 25% (85 of 339) at this conference. In addition, we should keep the conferences open to public free of charge. However, we may consider collecting fees for both the proceedings and the meals.

8. Other Collaboration Meetings

Many iCAST projects had taken this opportunity to conduct project reviews, technical discussions, and social meetings on-site and off-site at NTU, III, ITRI, and at some local restaurants.

9. Accomplishments

Overall, this conference has accomplished the following:

(1).     Conduct an Information Security meeting with a broad range of topics, high quality presentations, and a tutorial to a big audience.

(2).     Create an opportunity for Information Security experts from both Taiwan and the US to meet and communicate.

(3).     Promote iCAST recognition.

(4).     Review iCAST project progress.

(5).     Provide iCAST members opportunities to have PI-CPI face-to-face meetings for exchanging ideas and conducting progress reviews.

(6).     Provide a valuable opportunity for iCAST students to present in a big conference.

10. Proceedings

Besides publishing the conference guides and proceedings (volumes 1 and 2), we have also recorded all the events. Both the presentation files and the video archives are available on the iCAST website at http://www.icast.org.tw/events/conference-2007-01-08-10/.