The Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS) is the leading forum for interdisciplinary scholarship on information security and privacy, combining expertise from the fields of economics, social science, business, law, policy, and computer science.

The workshop accepts papers covering both theoretical and empirical studies of the interrelationship between information security (broadly construed, particularly to include privacy, cybercriminality and cyber-warfare) and economics (including financial incentives, behavioural economics, cyberinsurance). Market failures, market-induced technical failures, and cost analyses of investment in cybersecurity versus falling victim to cybercrime, have all been covered in past workshops.

Submission Guidelines

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the workshop no detailed formatting guidelines are set for submission. Authors may use whatever academic formats are usual in their field, but should keep in mind the interdisciplinary nature of the audience and try to write in a way that is accessible to those from outside their field. However, submissions should be in PDF to improve technical readability.

The workshop is for the presentation of novel conceptualisations or results in the field. Although the conference does not produce a refereed proceedings, papers should not be currently under review for or already accepted for publication in a refereed conference or journal during the workshop review period. The goal of the workshop is to provide a forum for discussion and feedback before work is published formally, rather than for the presentation of otherwise completed and published work.

Reviews will be conducted in a double anonymous manner (neither authors nor reviewers know the other’s identity) to try to ensure a fair reviewing process (see the CACM article Effectiveness of Anonymization in Double-Blind Review). The submission itself should not contain the names or affiliations of the authors (those details will be held on the submission site but not accessible to reviewers, only the PC chairs). References to previous work by the authors should be cited in the third person, and only where it is impossible to otherwise anonymise the current authors should references themselves be anonymised.

Authors may continue to present and discuss their work while it is under review, but should not deliberately seek to de-anonymise their submission by seeking out Program Committee members. See the Workshops’ Reviewer Ethics guidelines for more details.

List of Topics

We encourage participation by submission of paper and attendance by economists, computer scientists, legal scholars, business researchers (from academia and elsewhere), and security and privacy researchers from academia and industry to submit research on relevant topics, including but not limited to:

• Cyber risk management

  • Vulnerability discovery, disclosure, and patching

  • Incentives for and against pervasive monitoring threats

  • Cyber-risk quantification

    Cyber-insurance

• Economics and governance of privacy

  • Economics of privacy and anonymity

    Behavioural economics of privacy

    Data protection risks: legal, reputational, financial

• Cybercrime

  • Models and analysis of online crime (e.g. botnets, ransomware, and underground markets)

    Analysis of costs of cybercrime and impacts of counter-measures

• Cybersecurity policy

  • Security standards and regulation

    Incentives for information sharing and cooperation

    Cyber-defence strategy

    Geopolitical and international relations aspects of cybersecurity, including cyberterrorism

Committees

Program Committee

Program Co-Chairs:

• Dr. Andrew A. Adams of Meiji University and
• Prof. Lei Zhou of University of Maryland.

Program Committee Members:

• TBC

Organizing committee

• Prof. Kanta Matsuura of the University of Tokyo

• Takurou Hosio of the University of Tokyo

Venue

The Workshop will be held at Institute of Industrial Science in Komaba Research Campus of the University of Tokyo, Japan.

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to the PC Chairs: Dr Andrew A. Adams (aaa@meiji.ac.jp) and Prof Lei Zhou (lzhou@umd.edu).