3rd CCS 1996

PROGRAM CHAIRS' FOREWORD 

This is the third ACM Conference on Computer and Communications
Security. We think that this conference has quickly established a
tradition of its own. Researchers in all security disciplines are
aware that the conference provides a unique opportunity to present
high quality papers and to exchange ideas with colleagues working in
related areas, which obviously ensures cross-fertilization.

This year, the conference has faced a new challenge since the location
has moved from the Washington area to India. This was a clear
indication that the disciplines we cover are of worldwide interest and
was thought as an opportunity to establish fruitful links between
researchers thousands of miles away from each other. We knew that the
risk was that people from Europe or America might be reluctant to
travel so far. We are proud to see that this was not the case. We
received 59 papers, which is comparable to the figures of the first
two conferences.

The selection process was extremely careful: each paper was sent to 3
or 4 members of the program committee, without revealing the identity
of the authors. The committee members reviewed the papers and the
program committee met for a day long meeting at SRI, Palo Alto. A huge
debt of appreciation is owed to our Program Committee, and the
external referees they contacted, for the difficult job they
successfully executed. Several members of the committee travelled from
really far away places in order to attend. We wish to thank them
warmly.

The committee deliberated over each paper and arrived at the list of
papers that appear in the program. As was the case in previous years,
the program achieves a delicate balance between theory papers and
practice papers. The final number of papers is slightly below
twenty. This may appear low but is consistent with the highly
selective standards established by the previous
conferences. Furthermore, we wanted to allow enough time for
discussions between participants and for two panels: one on security
in developing countries, organized by Ravi Ganesan and one on smart
cards, organized by Jean-Jacques Quisquater. Of course, the choice of
the panelists, the decision to include invited papers and the overall
organization of these panels were under the sole responsability of the
organizers. We wish to thank them for the time and effort put into
this part of the conference.

We believe that the third ACM Conference on Computer and
Communications Securit will match up with the high quality standards
established by the two previous conferences and we would like to
thank those whose efforts were the sine-qua-non condition for making
this conference a success: the authors who submitted papers. We also
thank the participants who have chosen to attend. Welcome to the
conference!

Li Gong & Jacques Stern
Program Chairs