TUCSON, Ariz. (March 30, 2012) -- The fifth meeting of international thought leaders on the technologies used to protect wireless networks in home and commercial IT systems will take place in Tucson on the campus of The University of Arizona.

The 2012 ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks is hosted this year by UA Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and will be held in the South Ballroom of the UA Student Union Memorial Center.

ACM WiSec 2012 focuses on exploring vulnerabilities, threats, and attacks in wireless and mobile networks, and the techniques needed to address them. Focus networks include cellular, metropolitan, mesh, local-area, personal-area, home, vehicular, sensor, ad hoc, satellite, cognitive radio, radio-frequency identification (RFID) and underwater networks, as well as systems using non-RF wireless communication.

"The scientific results presented in WiSec 2012 are directly applicable to the information security challenges faced by the state of Arizona and the nation," said Loukas Lazos, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Arizona and co-chair of WiSec 2012. These challenges include the effective and autonomous monitoring of the borders, the secure and safe transportation of critical resources such as energy and water, and the provision of private communication services, Lazos said.

Co-chairing WiSec 2012 with Lazos is Marwan Krunz, a professor at both the UA department of electrical and computer engineering and the department of computer science. Krunz is co-author of "Detection of Malicious Packet Dropping in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks Based on Privacy-Preserving Public Auditing," a conference presentation based on findings by Krunz and co-author Tao Shu of Oakland University.

ASM WiSec is a one of the premier conferences in the field of mobile security and privacy, featuring cutting-edge research on the security of mobile platforms and wireless communications. Locations for the WiSEC conference in past years include the Hamburg University of Applied Science in Hamburg, Germany, and the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. The conference has also been held in Zurich, Switzerland, and Alexandria, Va.

Two keynote speakers are scheduled for the 2012 conference: Edward Felten, PhD, chief technologist of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University, is the first keynote. Felten is also founding director of Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy.

WiSec 2012's second keynote speaker is Tadayoshi Kohno, PhD, associate professor at the University of Washington department of computer science and engineering, and adjunct associate professor in UW's Information School. The conference features 17 technical presentations by authors from United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia.

More information on ACM WiSec 2012, including online registration, can be found at
http://www.sigsac.org/wisec/WiSec2012/

More information on the University of Arizona department of computer and electrical engineering can be found at
http://www.ece.arizona.edu/

Event at a glance

ACM WiSec 2012 Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks
April 16-18, 2012
University of Arizona Student Union Memorial Center, South Ballroom

The fifth meeting of international thought leaders on the technologies used to protect wireless and mobile networks takes place in Tucson on the campus of The University of Arizona, April 16-18, 2012. The conference is hosted by the UA Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and is held in the South Ballroom of the UA Student Union Memorial Center.

More information on ACM WiSec 2012, including online registration, can be found at
http://www.sigsac.org/wisec/WiSec2012/