Letter for the Program Chair - Adli Wahid

Overview
First of all, it is an honor to be able to serve the FIRST community as Program Chair for the 25th Annual FIRST Conference, 16-21 June 2013 in Bangkok, Thailand. It is that time of the year again when we ask you, our community, to help us to make this conference program a great one!

The theme for this year's conference is "Incident Response: Sharing to Win," and building upon the successes of our previous annual conferences, we will be developing three major tracks: Technical Foundations, Deep Technical Dives and Policy Management. We are looking for presentations that address the following, but not limited to, the following topics or goals:

• Provide Cutting Edge Technical Training
• Educate on the Emerging Threat Environment
• Demonstrate Effective Collaboration, Multi-stakeholders or "Sharing to Win" in Action
• Case Studies, Success Stories and Lessons Learned
• Policies and Prevention
• Incident Response Tools and Procedures
• Challenges Setting up or Managing Incident Response Teams
• New Developments in Regulations or Laws Concerning Breaches or Privacy
• Communication with Stakeholders and Public as to Minimize Damage after Breach
• Provide Examples of Collaborative Multi-lateral Defensive Framework
• Security Operations Activities
• Facilitate Knowledge Transfer
• The Cost of Breaches or Security Incidents
• Address the Softer Side of Effective Communication Skills
• Highlight Sector or Industry Specific Challenges and Initiatives
• Critical Information Infrastructure Protection

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 "Sharing to Win".

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 via first-2013chair@first.org.

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 & Discounts
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: 15 October 2012
• Submission Deadline: 7 December 2012
• Notification of Acceptance: End February 2013
• Final Presentation Due: 1 June 2013

Questions?
If you have any questions about the conference submission process or require additional information, please send your query to first-2013chair@first.org.

Best Regards,
Adli Wahid

FIRST Program Chair - 2013
FIRST.Org, Inc.