Posted by Martijn Grooten on Feb 17, 2018
The Call for Papers for VB2018, the 28th Virus Bulletin International Conference, which will take place in Montreal, 3-5 October 2018, opened last month. It will remain open until 18 March.
If you're considering submitting a paper and you have not attended a VB conference before, it might help to have a better understanding of the audience.
Many attendees are security researchers. They spend their days (and often nights) analysing malware, threats and vulnerabilities. They attend conferences like VB to talk about their work, learn what others have worked on and, perhaps most importantly, to make the contacts that are so essential for any security researcher.
Many other attendees, however, have less technical roles. They manage a product, a team, or both; they may be the 'evangelists' that spend their days talking to the wider audience about security issues; or they may work in the 'real world' in CISO-like roles. Such people often have a technical background but they rarely, if ever, get their hands dirty any more and depend on conferences like VB to learn about the current state of research.
This means that any kind of security research, especially if it has practical relevance, is likely to be received with interest: analyses of malware, vulnerabilities and threat campaigns; detailed studies of one particular incident, or talks that take a bird's-eye view of a whole category of threats; talks about tools that make researchers' lives easier and tools that improve the detection of various threats.
But there is far more to security research than the cat-and-mouse game of extra layers of packers and the increasingly complex flow charts in IDA Pro. We very much welcome talks on non-technical aspects of security too, and in the past we have had important talks on topics as varied as user education, spyware used in domestic abuse cases, and the legal issues that may come with running a malware research lab.
One thing we are particularly interested in are talks from people who are at the forefront of protecting organisations, whether they are large companies, government institutions or NGOs. What attacks do you see and what are you doing to prevent them from impacting your organisation? What tools have you built that make your work a lot easier? And how does the real world differ from the picture painted by security vendors?
As I have said previously, we welcome both new and experienced speakers. We do not have a separate 'rookie' track, but we are happy to support and help you to deliver your paper as well as possible.
We welcome speakers from all over the world. We attract a very global audience and, for many attendees, English is not their first language – so if this applies to you as well, do not let it put you off!
The FAQs we posted for last year's conference still apply, but please don't hesitate to contact me ([email protected]) if you have any other questions. We look very much forward to your submission!
Finally, if this is the kind of audience your company likes to connect with, why not become a partner of the conference? Email us at [email protected] for more information.
