IFIP Technical Committee 11 (Security and Privacy Protection in Information Processing Systems) brought together researchers, educators and practitioners from around the world in Perth, Australia, from 8-11 June for its annual meeting, the International Conference on ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection (SEC 2026), and the World Conference on Information Security Education (WISE 2026). Hosted at Edith Cowan University’s new City Campus, the events showcased the latest advances in cybersecurity research while strengthening international collaboration across the IFIP security community.
The annual TC11 meeting on 8 June provided an opportunity for national computer society representatives, working group officers and technical committee members to review the year’s activities and consider future initiatives. The committee also welcomed new national representatives from Lithuania, Slovakia and Serbia, further strengthening TC11’s international network.
SEC 2026 followed from 9-11 June, featuring three days of technical presentations exploring the latest developments in cybersecurity research and practice. The conference included keynote presentations by Professor Rossouw von Solms of Nelson Mandela University, who reflected on the evolution of information security research over the past 35 years, and Dr Gayan Benedict, Industry Research Fellow at MIT CISR and Partner at PwC, who examined how converging technological disruptions are making research an essential capability for organisational, industry and societal resilience.
During the conference, Professor von Solms was presented with the 2026 Kristian Beckman Award, IFIP TC11’s highest honour. Established in 1992, the award commemorates TC11’s founding Chair, Kristian Beckman, and recognises outstanding lifetime contributions to information security. Professor von Solms received the award in recognition of more than four decades of distinguished contributions to information security research, education and practice, together with his longstanding service to the international cybersecurity community.
(Caption: L-R: Professor Rossouw von Solms of Nelson Mandela University with TC11 Chair, Professor Paul Haskell-Dowland)
Thirty-nine peer-reviewed papers were presented throughout the conference across a broad range of topics, including AI for cybersecurity, cryptography, cyber-physical systems security, data and applications security, network and systems security, and privacy, identification, authentication and access control. The SEC 2026 proceedings are available via the conference website, with complimentary PDF downloads available until early July.
Alongside SEC 2026, IFIP Working Group 11.8 (Information Security Education) held its Annual General Meeting and co-hosted the World Conference on Information Security Education (WISE 2026). Fourteen papers were presented over two days, providing a valuable forum for researchers and educators to exchange ideas and advance cybersecurity education. The WISE 2026 proceedings are also available through the conference website.
According to TC11 Chair Professor Paul Haskell-Dowland, the week demonstrated the value of bringing together the international security community to share research, strengthen collaboration and address the rapidly evolving cybersecurity challenges facing organisations and society.
The conference concluded with the presentation of the major paper awards by Computers & Security Editor-in-Chief Professor Steven Furnell, TC11 Editor Professor Edgar Weippl and WG 11.8 Chair Professor Erik Moore.
COSE Best Paper Award
“Hop-Decayed Influence: New Vulnerabilities of Structural Auxiliary Indexing in GraphRAG Pipelines with LLM” – Jisung Park, John Le and Heath Cooper
(Caption: L-R: Professor Edgar Weippl (TC11 editor to COSE), Jisung Park (University of Wollongong), Professor Steven Furnell (COSE Editor in Chief) and TC11 Chair Professor Paul Haskell-Dowland)
Yves Deswarte Best Student Paper Award
Feature-Selective Representation Misdirection for Machine Unlearning – Taozhao Chen, Linghan Huang, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo and Huaming Chen
(Caption: L-R: Professor Erik Moore (WG11.8 Chair), Taozhao Chen (University of Sydney) and TC11 Chair, Professor Paul Haskell-Dowland. All images supplied)
The conference also concluded with the announcement that Linköping, Sweden, will host SEC 2027.
Together, the TC11 meeting, SEC 2026 and WISE 2026 demonstrated the continuing strength of IFIP’s international cybersecurity community and its commitment to advancing research, education and collaboration in an increasingly complex digital world.
Readers interested in learning more about TC11 and its working groups can visit the TC11 website, while further information about SEC and WISE, including conference proceedings, is available through the SEC 2026 conference website.