**The 2012 Call for Speakers has concluded.**

Letter from the 2012 Program Chair

Overview
It's an honor and a pleasure to serve the FIRST community as the program chair for the 2012 conference in Malta. Recent FIRST conferences have set a high bar for this year's program, and together the program committee and the community can meet these goals.

This year we seek materials in three major tracks: technical foundations, deep technical dives, and policy and management issues. We are looking for presentations that address the following topics or goals:

• Provide cutting edge Technical Training
• Facilitate Knowledge Transfer
• Educate on the Threat Environment
• Address the softer side of Effective Communication Skills
• Demonstrate effective "Trusted Sharing" in action
• Privacy Breaches
• Case Studies
• Policies and Prevention
• Forensic Tools and Procedures
• Legal Counsel/Law Enforcement
• How to Respond to and Counter-Act Breaches
• Guidelines for Incident Response Teams
• New Developments in Protection of Privacy
• Communication with stakeholders and Public as to Minimize Damage after Breach
• Provide examples of collaborative multi-lateral defensive work

We are also looking for presentations that are relevant to Incident Handling newcomers, and also presentations of success stories or lessons learned from a team, a larger organization or an ecosystem perspective.

Process of Selection
The FIRST program committee solicits original contributions for this conference, which are broadly based on the theme of Security is Not an Island.

All submissions must reflect original contributions and must adequately document any overlap with previously published or simultaneously submitted presentations or papers from any of the authors. If authors have any doubts regarding whether such overlap exists, they should contact the program chair prior to submission.

The Program Committee is also looking for proposals that will deliver specialist technical presentations, where presentations may last for up to three hours and which are aimed at a smaller more technical audience. These presentations are intended to include live demos and involve their audiences in active participation.

Presentations will be scheduled as part of the Main Conference.

Timeslots are available in two lengths:

• 30-minutes, which includes a 5-minute question period
• 45-minutes, which includes a 10-minute question period

It is important that your presentation be:

• Topical
• Unique

You should not present with the aim of gaining the audience's interest in any commercial application or product, in other words: NO MARKETING PRESENTATIONS.

At this time we are seeking proposals covering the presenters' names, organizations they represent, topics, proposed length, and an abstract. All submissions must be submitted in English and via the online presentation submission form.

Process of Evaluation
All submissions will be handled electronically through the presentation submission form.

The program committee will evaluate all submissions based on quality and relevance. All accepted submissions are held in confidence for publication leading up to the conference.

Submissions received after the deadline (see "Important Dates" below) will not be considered. Where employer, client, or government authorization is needed, it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain such authorization prior to submitting the final materials.

Accepted papers will be presented by their author(s) and will be published in the conference proceedings with associated speaker biographies and headshots (if applicable). The proceedings are provided free of charge to conference attendees. After the conference, papers will be published to the Members Only area on the FIRST website.

Copyright
FIRST requires a non-exclusive copyright license for all the speaker presentations delivered at the conference. This includes distribution on the FIRST website(s).

Speaker Privileges
A discount off the conference fee will be offered for each accepted presentation. Only one discount per speaker per presentation will be offered.

Important Dates

• Submission Open: October 7, 2011
• Submission Deadline: December 16, 2011
• Notification of Acceptance: February 1, 2012
• Final Presentation Due: June 1, 2012

Questions?
If you have any questions about the conference submission process or require additional information, please send your query to first-2012chair@first.org.

Best Regards,
Dr. Jose Nazario

FIRST Program Chair - 2012
FIRST.Org, Inc.