On 20th May, TC11 held its annual meeting as a precursor to the SEC conference in Maribor, Slovenia. The meeting provided an opportunity for national computer society representatives, working group officers and the technical committee officers to report on the year’s activities and to consider new initiatives.
The 40th anniversary International Conference on ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection (SEC 2025) was held on 21-23 May and provided three days of keynotes, workshops and author presentations. Our host for the event was the University of Maribor, whose 2020 event during COVID restrictions was forced fully on-line, but who exceeded expectations this year to provide a wonderful experience for meeting attendees and conference delegates. The program also included trips to the World’s Oldest Grapevine and to the historic town of Ptuj and the Dominican Monastery.
Keynotes included:
- Dr Nastja Cepak
Post-Quantum Cryptography and the Decade of Transition - Prof. Dr Reinhard Posch
eIDAS2 – a milestone for security in public services? - Prof. Jaideep Vaidya (KBA Award)
AI and Conceptions of Privacy
The 28 paper presentations were delivered across the three days. The program covered topics including:
- Data and Application Security
- Emerging Threats and Countermeasures
- Industrial and Critical Infrastructure Security
- IoT security
- Privacy-enhancing technologies and protection
- Risk Management
Proceedings from SEC 2025 are available in a two-volume set, published through Springer and listed under the TC11 conference series. The proceedings can be accessed through the conference website.
The event concluded with the announcement of the 2026 conference location (Perth, Australia) with the website already live (https://sec2026.org).
Various awards were presented at the event, including:
- COSE Best Paper Award
Post-Processing in Local Differential Privacy: An Extensive Evaluation and Benchmark Platform by Alireza Khodaie, Berkay Kemal Balioglu, and M. Emre Gursoy - Yves Deswarte Best Student Paper Award
CoolTest: Improved Randomness Testing Using Boolean Functions by Jiří Gavenda and Marek Sýs
In addition to our annual SEC conference, WG 11.8 (Information Security Education) co-hosted their AGM and World Conference on Information Security Education (WISE) seeing 15 presentations, a workshop and an invited talk.
Sessions from the WISE conference included:
- Workforce and Curriculum Development
- Innovative Approaches to Cybersecurity Awareness
- Gamification in Cybersecurity Education
- Standards / Regulations
- Curriculum and Research Development
Proceedings for WISE 2025 will be available soon.
Finally, WG 11.4 co-hosted their annual meeting and International Workshop on Network and Distributed Systems Security (WNDSS) with seven papers presented and a dedicated keynote speaker:
Matt Bishop
Security Issues with Networked and Distributed Systems
Sessions from the WNDSS workshop included:
- Binary Protocols and Security of Smart Grids
- Resilience, Anonymity Networks, and Liveness Detection
- Security of Industrial Control Systems
Papers from WNDSS 2025 are included in volume two of the main SEC proceedings.
The events were a great success, and we encourage the IFIP community (and those beyond) to consider connecting with our working groups – you can find details on our website: https://ifiptc11.org/
Prof. Paul Haskell-Dowland
TC11 Chair
Professor of Cyber Security Practice, Edith Cowan University, Australia