Call for Papers

As the backbone of communications amongst objects, humans, companies, and administrations, the Internet has become a great integration platform capable of efficiently interconnecting billions of entities, from RFID chips to data centers. This platform provides access to multiple hardware and virtualized resources (servers, networking, storage, applications, connected objects) coming from cloud computing and internet-of-things infrastructures. From these resources that may be hosted and distributed amongst different providers and tenants, the building and operation of complex and value-added networked systems is enabled.

These networked systems are, however, subject to a large variety of security attacks, such as distributed denial-of-service, man-in-the-middle, web-injection and malicious software attacks, orchestrated in a more or less stealthy manner through the Internet. While they are gaining in sophistication and coordination (i.e. advanced persistent threats), these attacks may affect the fundamental security goals of confidentiality, integrity, availability and non-repudiation of resources. The accessibility, distribution, and increased complexity of networked systems make them particularly vulnerable targets. In that context, cybersecurity techniques offer new perspectives for protecting these networked systems, through the elaboration of intelligent and efficient management methods for detecting, analyzing and mitigating such attacks.

IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (IEEE TNSM) is a premier journal for timely publication of archival research on the management of networks, systems, services and applications. Following the success of the last recent TNSM special issue on cybersecurity techniques for managing networked systems in 2020, this special issue will also focus on latest developments for security management of networks and services. We welcome submissions addressing the important challenges (see the non-exhaustive list of topics below) and presenting novel research or experimentation results. Survey papers that offer a perspective on related work and identify key challenges for future research will be considered as well. We look forward to your submissions!

About the Special Issue

Topics of interest for this special issue, include, but are not limited to the following:

• Network and service management for security
• Security of network and service management
• Security management architecture, protocols and APIs
• Secure and resilient design and deployment of networked systems
• Monitoring and detection of threats and attacks
• Artificial intelligence, machine learning for cyber-security
• Analytics and big data for security management
• Modeling for security management
• Configuration and orchestration of security mechanisms
• Algorithms for security management
• Security automation, policy-based management
• NFV-based security functions and services
• Security of programmable components
• Chaining and orchestration of security functions
• Distributed security management
• Intrusion detection, tolerance, and prevention
• Resilience against large-scale distributed attacks
• Trust and identity management
• Verification and enforcement of security properties
• Vulnerability prevention and remediation
• Performance of security management
• Security of cloud applications and services
• Security of data-center infrastructures
• Security of 5G networks and services
• Security of smart environments
• Security of Internet of Things
• Security of SCADA, industrial and health networks
• Security of SDN- and NFV-based systems
• Network forensics, auditing and responses to incidents
• Privacy-preserving solutions for cybersecurity
• Detailed experience reports from experimental testbeds
• Blockchains for security management
• Security-related business, regulation and legal aspects

Submission Format

Papers will be evaluated based on their originality, presentation, relevance and contribution to the field of management of software-defined virtualized systems, as well as their overall quality and suitability for the special issue. The submitted papers must be written in good English and describe original research which has not been published nor currently under review by other journals or conferences. Previously published conference papers should be clearly identified by the authors at the initial submission stage and an explanation should be provided of how such papers have been extended in order to be considered for this special issue.

View the author guidelines for the preparation of your manuscript. For more information, please contact Remi Badonnel.

Submission Guidelines

All manuscripts and any supplementary material should be submitted through the IEEE ManuscriptCentral service. Authors must indicate in the submission cover letter that their manuscript is intended for the “Latest Developments for Security Management of Networks and Services” special issue.

Important Dates

Paper Submission Date:  30 October 2020 (extended)
Notification of Acceptance: 15 February 2021
Publication Date*: 1 June 2021

Guest Editors

(* online published version will be available in IEEE Xplore with the final DOI immediately after the camera ready version has been submitted)