In the last week of April, UCL Department of Computer Science was delighted to play host to the 3rd IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy, which took place at the heart of the Knowledge Quarter at the British Library.

Since 1980, world-leading experts in the fields of information security and electronic privacy have gathered annually for the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. As such, it has become the principal forum for the exploration of development of research and practice in security. Following the success of the original symposium, the European Symposium on Security & Privacy (EuroS&P) was launched, which now takes place annually in a major European city.

“I am very happy this year’s conference took place in London and I think it was a great success”, said Dr Emiliano De Cristofaro, Reader in Security and Privacy Enhancing Technologies in UCL Computer Science. “Sure, it was a lot of work for the team (George Danezis, our dedicated volunteers and myself), but it is very important to us to make sure we have strong and excellent cybersecurity academic conferences taking place in Europe on a regular basis.”

The week kicked off with a welcome reception at the Alan Turing Institute, and a social dinner at the Imperial Hotel, where participants could network, and exchange ideas and expectations for the week ahead. Over 150 attendees from all over the world then took part in a packed schedule of affiliated workshops, interactive discussion and Q&A sessions, and two keynotes by research and industry specialists in the field.

The first of these keynotes, entitled “From password policies to adversarial machine learning: It's all about the user”, was delivered from the ‘academic camp’ by Lujo Bauer, Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The second, by Sunny Consolvo of Google, was entitled “Studying user-facing threats in security & privacy”, and touched on the often-neglected problem of the relationship between domestic abuse and security.

The week also saw 33 papers presented, chosen from 145 submissions. The stiff competition that caused this low acceptance rate is testament to the importance of this event to the European research community, believes Dr De Cristofaro:“With 3 of the top 4 top security conferences always happening in North America, and the other one rotating every couple of years, it is always a bit harder to get the non-academic community, as well as students, exposed to top-notch research as well as in direct contact with leader in security research.”

The organisers would like to thank all those who submitted papers, presenters and attendees for such an insightful and enjoyable week.

A special thanks to the Symposium Sponsors: Google, Facebook, Hyperledger/IBM, Alan Turing Institute.

You can find the whole schedule of presentations and activities on the EuroS&P 2018 website.

Find out more about the Information Security Group in UCL Computer Science here.