Security and Communication Networks Special Issue: Knowledge Discovery and Intelligent Systems in Information Security and Digital Forensics

Call for Papers

While computing and communication technologies have greatly improved our daily lives, unprecedented increase of cyberattacks, cybercrimes, and cyberterrorism has posed tremendous challenges for national security, international peace, public safety, and privacy. Accordingly, the theory and practice of information security and digital forensics have received extensive attention from government officials and business analysts, decision makers, crime investigators, and security staff, as well as researchers.

In spite of the efforts in cybersecurity, cybercrimes continue to grow worldwide and existing approaches for addressing the problems are mostly reactive and often easily outsmarted. In order to proactively tackle the ever-evolving cybercrime activities and to secure communications, more sophisticated and intelligent methodologies need to be developed. Widely applied to various areas, intelligent computational techniques and systems have impacted the modern society in many ways. Advances in computational intelligence have contributed to practical solutions to complex real-world problems, for which traditional methods are ineffective or infeasible. In particular, data mining and pattern recognition techniques have been utilized to combat cybercrimes.

Aiming to demonstrate the effectiveness of computational intelligence techniques in digital forensics and information security applications, this special issue will provide a timely venue for sharing knowledge of leading experts around the world and for presenting novel advancements in information security and digital forensics. The objectives of this special issue are as follows: (1) to increase awareness of the applicability of advanced computational techniques in digital forensics and information assurance; (2) to provide opportunity for sharing research ideas and results in the field; and (3) to further promote collaborative research among participants from various disciplines. Bridging the gap among knowledge discovery, computational intelligence, cyber forensics, and information assurance, it intends to enhance the communication and collaboration among researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and government.

The special issue emphasizes computational intelligence, broadly construed, and its applications in information security and digital forensics. Recognizing the broad range of topics and recent advances in the field (including intelligent systems, genetic algorithms and modelling, fuzzy systems, artificial neural networks, expert and decision support systems, learning and evolutionary computing, evolutionary computing, big data and analytics, data mining, and deep learning), the special issue also aims to promote the application of the techniques of intelligent systems, pattern recognition, and data science to cybersecurity and digital forensics, with particular interest in relation to current technologies and platforms in broad use.

Original manuscripts are solicited presenting new research results on the theory, algorithms, methods, and practice on relevant topics.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

Privacy and data protection
Biometrics
IoT security, VoIP security, and Web application security
Acquisition, integration, visualization, and analytics of big data for cybersecurity
Techniques and methods of pattern recognition in cybersecurity applications
Cybersecurity and digital forensics applications of deep learning and zero-shot learning
Fuzzy systems and evolutionary computation methods for information assurance and digital forensics applications
Cybercrime analysis
Fraud and forgery detection
Intrusion detection, prevention, and management
Malware analysis and detection
Video surveillance, video search matching, and anomaly detection
Multimedia security and forensics
Networking security and forensics
Social media and instant messaging privacy, security, and forensics
Cloud computing security and forensics
Countermeasures to steganography, forgery, covert channels, and other threats to security
Authors can submit their manuscripts through the Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/scn/kdis/.

Manuscript Due Friday, 26 May 2017
First Round of Reviews Friday, 18 August 2017
Publication Date Friday, 13 October 2017

Lead Guest Editor

Andrew H. Sung, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, USA

Guest Editors

Bernardete Ribeiro, University of Coimbra, Polo II-Pinhal de Marrocos, Coimbra, Portugal
Lei Chen, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, USA
Min Kyung An, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, USA
Noel Lopes, Polytechnic Institute of Guarda, Guarda, Portugal
Qingzhong Liu, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, USA