wcn 2011 - Network Assurance and Security Services in Ubiquitous Environments

The technology for ubiquitous computing system is advancing rapidly; however, the technology for ensuring security and availability has not kept pace. Since security has not been considered as an essential element in the design process and is often added as an afterthought, many modern systems are often plagued with numerous vulnerabilities. Thus, to have secure and resilient ubiquitous systems, essential network assurance and security (NAS) measures have to be incorporated in the design process and during their operation.

Network assurance (NA) quantifies risk from a network perspective, based on a comprehensive set of network facts. A complement to security solutions, network assurance measures the impact of network change on security, availability, and compliance. Using NA, organization can also prioritize remediation efforts based on a complete view of connectivity and risk. This is a critical requirement for validating policies and controls, as organizations weave security into the fabric of the infrastructure. Consequently, NAS has become an important research issue in ubiquitous environments (UEs). Finding effective ways to protect networks and sensitive data within the critical information infrastructure in UE is challenging even with the most advanced technology and trained professionals.

1687-1472
The aim of this special issue is to provide an effective forum for original scientific and engineering advances in NAS issues in UE. It will highlight various aspects of NAS?especially on crucial linkage between availability, compliance, and security. This issue will bring out the latest development and recent research results in this important technical area as well as problems and solutions related to NAS issues in UE. Topics include, but are not limited to:

Design, architectures, protocols, development, and deployment of NAS
Availability, dependability, survivability, and resilience issues
Authentication, Authorization, Access control and ID management
Redundancy, fault-tolerant models, and failure prevention
Trust modeling and management
Risk assessment and management
Cryptographic, network security and key management
Novel threats, attacks, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures
Reverse engineering of malicious code
Intrusion detection, IDS/IPS
Anonymity, user, and location privacy
Content protection and DRM
System/network management
Network forensics and fraud detection
Surveillance and privacy-enhancing technologies
Adaptive and Autonomic security
Multimedia security and privacy
Legal, ethical and policy issues related to NAS
New ideas and paradigms for NAS
Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/wcn/guidelines.htm.... Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable:

Manuscript Due December 15, 2010
First Round of Reviews March 15, 2011
Publication Date June 15, 2011