ICSSA 2020 Wrap-up

When the Corona pandemic started in March this year, the organizers of the International Conference on Software Security and Assurance (ICSSA 2020) had to begin to think about the possibility of either canceling the event altogether or finding an alternative. As we all know, things got worse through the rest of this year.

We all prepared a face-to-face format, but the second-best option was a virtual meeting, and the general chairs and program chairs of the ICSSA 2020 took a deep breath and dived into preparing for their first online conference. To everyone's surprise, ICSSA 2020 was a resounding success.

We decided to spread out the conference sessions to three days instead of its usual two-day format to avoid afternoon sessions, which would have been sleeping hours for those, especially in Asia. Our strategy worked out well and allowed many of our attendees from Europe and Asia to participate in our sessions.

Day 1 of the conference started with opening remarks by the general chair, Dr. Jungwoo Ryoo from Penn State.

The keynote speaker was Dr. Hyoungshick Kim at Sungkyunkwan University. He spoke about the Usable and Secure Graphical Passwords for Smartphones.

The talks that followed the keynote focused on blockchains and compliance.

The Day 2 keynote speaker was Dr. Edgar Weippl, Professor at the University of Vienna. He spoke about the distributed ledger technology, blockchain, and cryptocurrencies. Attendees received Dr. Weipple's talk very well because he provided an excellent introduction to potential research areas in blockchain technologies. Day 2 speakers gave presentations on secure software design and implementation.

Day 3 was the final day of our virtual conference. Dr. Lotfi Ben Othmane from the Iowa State University delivered a keynote talk. His talk title was Detecting Intrusion in Connected Vehicles, which was consistent with the day's theme: Internet of Things (IoT). He discussed car security vulnerabilities and how attackers can exploit them.

Overall, ICSSA 2020 went very smoothly, and we all enjoyed learning new ideas and emerging technologies. We missed the networking opportunities but still enjoyed each other's company. We hope to host an in-person conference in August 2021 at Penn State Altoona.