Skip to content

Home  |   FAQ  |   Contact  |   Privacy & Use

customize

CALL FOR PAPERS

The deadline for submissions has passed. We look forward to all submissions for next year's GFIRST conference.

Submission Form Guidelines

Before you complete your Call for Speakers Submission form, please consider the following suggestions, designed to increase your chances of being selected as a presenter for the conference.

Session Information

1. Choose your presentation topic.
GFIRST is a resource for practitioners in incident response and information sharing. The conference brings together a dedicated group of government incident responders with the larger incident response community to protect the nation’s key information technology infrastructures. Your presentation topic should help participants find new areas of collaboration. Presentations should promote learning objectives that help to convey awareness of cybersecurity issues and promote an effective response capability to manage risks in cyberspace. They should avoid marketing or business development biases.

2. Tactfully choose your session title.
Your session title should clearly indicate the topic of your presentation. You may want to look through prior GFIRST Conference presentation titles to note titles that appeal to you. Please balance the informative and creative aspects of your title. It is counterproductive to select a catchy title that fails to define the topic of your presentation.

3. Write your own session abstract in less than 400 characters.
The session abstract is a brief summary of your presentation. It will be used in the registration and conference materials and tells attendees as much about you as your bio. Clearly state what attendees can expect to learn from you.

4. Establish up to five concise learning objectives.
Your learning objectives tell the selection committee and the attendees what your presentation will teach. Use specific verbs such as list, identify, state, and describe; avoid vague words such as know or understand. These objectives should also be listed on the second slide of your final presentation.

5. Choose the appropriate session format.
You can submit an individual presentation, one that has two speakers (Co-Speakers), or a Panel Discussion.

  • If you choose the Co-Speakers session format, you will need to designate a primary speaker and a secondary speaker. The Conference Manager will contact the primary speaker with any questions or decisions about your session.
  • If you are conducting a Panel Discussion, your session will have a Moderator and up to four Panelists. The Moderator is responsible for facilitating the panel discussion, but is not a designated speaker. The panelists can make very short (2-3 minute) presentations to identify their individual position on the topic, but the majority of the time should be spent on Q&A. Panelists may use slides at the discretion.

NOTE: The positions of the individual panelists should be clarified and communicated to all the other panelists before the Conference begins. Also, please confirm the availability, expertise and commitment of any co-speakers and panelists before submitting their names.

Session Classification

6. Choose the appropriate classifications
Your presentation may not suit all conference attendees. Please define your presentation by the following criterion to attract an appropriate audience.

Experience
Help attendees determine whether or not their experience is sufficient to appreciate your level of expertise.

  • Not Rated Sessions require no particular experience. They attract an audience of IT professionals with varied backgrounds and skill sets.
  • Advanced Sessions require a particular knowledge base. They focus on advanced principles and concepts. If your presentation requires certain experience, please recommend pre-requisite knowledge.

Category
Your presentation may fall into one of these three categories.

  • Non-Technical Sessions rely on classroom instruction.
  • Demo Sessions incorporate a demonstration.
  • Hands-on Sessions are interactive in nature. Attendees may be required to bring their own laptops to participate. Please list any technical requirements, such as a laptop computer with local administrator/root privileges or Java Runtime Environment.

7. Audience
Please note if your audience should be government-only, as we understand the sensitivity around some topics.

Track Selection

8. Choose your track

GFIRST6 is comprised of the following tracks. Topics within each track should promote an effective response capability to manage risks in cyberspace.

Track 1: Policy / Government
Provides attendees with an understanding of national-level cybersecurity policy and initiatives, as well as DHS-specific initiatives. In addition, provides the opportunity for US-CERT federal, state, and local partners to discuss their activities and efforts to manage cyber risk.

Track 2: Threat Landscape
Allows participants the opportunity to discuss shifts in the evolving threat landscape, from widespread and unfocused Internet worms to targeted attacks aimed at specific organizations and individuals.

Track 3: Incident Management
Allows participants to talk about best practices and efforts within the Incidents Management lifecycle, including preparation, detection/analysis, and response/recovery.

Track 4: Coordination
Offers attendees the opportunity to re-think traditional relationships within the cyber community, while redefining necessary alliances to secure cyberspace.

Track 5: Legal / Law
Aims to educate attendees on legal issue related to the use of communication, transactional, and distributive aspects of networked information devices and technologies.

Target Conference Audience
The conference is open to IT professionals from the public sector, including federal, state and local governments, as well as academia and international partners.

Time Slots
Conference presentations are generally 45 minutes to 2 hours in length, including allotted Question & Answer time. A member of the committee will notify you with your assigned time slot as soon as the program agenda is finalized.

Process of Selection
We will evaluate all submissions based on quality and relevance.All submissions are held in confidence prior to publication in the proceedings.

Please Note: Submissions must reflect original work and must adequately document any overlap with previously published or simultaneously submitted papers from any of the authors.If authors have any doubts regarding whether such overlap exists, they should contact the program chairs prior to submission.

Submissions received after the April 9th deadline (see “Important Dates” below) may not be considered unless the program chair has granted an extension.When 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 photographs (unless other arrangements are requested in advance). After the Conference, presentations may also be published on the GFIRST secure portal.

Copyright
GFIRST requires a nonexclusive copyright license for all the papers presented at the Conference and for the presentation materials.This includes distribution on the US-CERT secure portal.

PLEASE NOTE

  • Presenters will not be reimbursed for travel to and from the Conference, per diem, and hotel.
  • No honorarium is provided for speakers.

Questions
If you have additional questions about the Conference or submission process of if you require more information, please send your query to gfirst@us-cert.gov.