The sixth annual Counter-eCrime Operations Summit (CeCOS VI) will engage questions of operational challenges and the development of common resources for the first responders and forensic professionals who protect consumers and enterprises from the ecrime threat every day. This year's meeting will focus on the shifting nature of cybercrime and the attendant challenges of managing that dynamic threatscape. Within that framework, CeCOS VI Prague will review the development of response paradigms and resources for counter-cybercrime managers and forensic professionals in the private and public sectors. Presenters will also be reviewing case studies of national and regional economies under attack, narratives of successful trans-national forensic cooperation, considering models for cooperation against ecrime and examining resources for cybercrime response and forensic enterprises.

This is an important opportunity for stakeholders to meet, define common goals and to plan the harmonization of resources for the global counter-ecrime effort. If you are an information security professional, law enforcement officer, counter-ecrime technology developer, CISO/Security manager, (military or corporate) intelligence officer, policy analyst, technologist, legislator, legislative researcher, industrial standards author, corporate security manager, private investigator or academic/industrial researcher in ecrime you should attend this summit.

The program will be spread across a three-day conference event on April 25, 26 and 27 in Prague, Czech Republic at the Mövenpick Hotel Near the city center. The APWG believes under-appreciated operational issues are important enough to be the focus of a conference dedicated exclusively to them. They're often talked about as sidelights but rarely addressed directly as an organizational imperative for the entire counter-ecrime community. CeCOS VI makes those operational issue the central focus of the program for the benefit of all ecrime fighters.
  

Presentations at the opening of the program will be delivered by ecrime responders within the APWG, its Global Research Partners and law enforcement personnel who will discuss national and regional ecrime trends and individual case studies about resolving specific electronic crime cases. Presenters will come from the ranks of private industry, private security companies, public law enforcement agencies, government agencies and national Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERT). True crime stories will be balanced with instruction about the skills the responders exercise as well as the data and tools employed to resolve phishing attacks.

APWG principals, research fellows and Global Research Partners will detail survey the eCrime landscape and present proposals for organizing global responses that will harmonize efforts of eCrime respondents and organize the work of securing the global network infrastructure. Furthermore, presenters will examine the development ecrime data exchange specifications and how they can be employed to optimize counter-ecrime applications. Presentations about industrial policy at CeCOS VI will investigate industrial policies that complicate the work of exploited brandholders and responders - such as the segments of domain name system (DNS) registration process that is abused by phishers as part of their phishing campaigns.
  

Though instruction is always an APWG priority, the other defining goal is to identify common forensic needs - in terms the data, tools and communications protocols that are required to inform and facilitate time-sensitive communications between counter-ecrime stakeholders.

APWG has surveyed a lot of proposals and all have merit but required some harmonization of effort in order to make them maximally useful. APWG hopes that at the end of the program, the ensuing dialog will produce defined projects to organize data, tools and communications protocols that are required by the larger counter-ecrime community.
 

APWG members, research partner and correspondents are invited and encouraged to submit their proposals for presentations and panel discussions. Proposals should be in the form of a title and extended abstract. All proposals should be submitted to the APWG Program Committee at proposals@apwg.org. Abstracts will be accepted till Midnight Eastern Time on March 16, 2012.

The APWG CeCOS conferences investigate the modern phenomena of electronic crime from the point of view of the responder who must undertake forensic exercises to investigate the crimes and the managers who must protect consumers and enterprise computer and network users every day. CeCOS presenters discuss all aspects of electronic crime and ways to combat it.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Phishing, rogue-AV, pharming, click-fraud, crimeware, extortion and emerging attacks.
• Technical, legal, political, social and psychological aspects of fraud and fraud prevention.
• Malware, botnets, ecriminal/phishing gangs and collaboration, or money laundering.
• Techniques to assess the risks and yields of attacks and the success rates of countermeasures.
• Delivery techniques, including spam, voice mail and rank manipulation; and countermeasures.
• Spoofing of different types, and applications to fraud.
• Techniques to avoid detection, tracking and takedown; and ways to block such techniques.
• Honeypot design, data mining, and forensic aspects of fraud prevention.
• Design and evaluation of user interfaces in the context of fraud and network security.
• Best practices related to digital forensics tools and techniques, investigative procedures, and evidence acquisition, handling and preservation.
   

APWG is offering an opportunity to build relationships while marketing your company to a targeted audience of security, messaging and financial professionals. Sponsorships are a personal, non-intrusive way of conveying your message. Additionally, your participation can help support activities vital to the overall success of the APWG and its research partners, which ultimately contributes to the success of the entire counter-eCrime stakeholders' community.

There are a sponsorship opportunities available for those who want to use this meetings as an opportunity to communicate their brand and message to APWG members, presenters and event attendees, each either a critical decision maker or a thought leader in his or her own right.

Please contact Deputy-Secretary Foy Shiver for details via email at fshiver [at] apwg.org.