S&P 2019 Announcement

Registration is now open for the 40th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP19) and its associated workshops!

We are excited to announce that the final revision and acceptance decisions for the SP19 technical program have been made. Our final program will include over 80 papers, many of which are already online (and all of which will be online before the Symposium). Complete statistics for the SP19 rolling acceptance process will be online by the end of the month.

SP19 remains committed to a program featuring the highest-quality papers, and at the same time, continues to see growth in submissions meriting acceptance. This year in particular, we have seen a substantial increase in the number of submissions. While SP19's acceptance rate remains comparable to recent prior years (~12%), the technical program itself has grown by about 20 papers relative to last year. This is an increase of ~33% — for our three-day program, this is equivalent to growing the technical content by a full day, and it represents an unprecedented growth for the S&P technical program. In its 40 year history, paper additions to Oakland's program have been in the single digits, with only two exceptions: in 2006, the program grew by 15 papers (to a total of total 32 papers), and in 2015, the program grew by 11 papers (to a total of total 55 papers). Peter Neumann's comments seem as applicable today with a program of over 80 papers, as they were at the third Oakland with a program of 19 papers:

"This year there was not only a relative flood of papers, but the quality was such that it was difficult to have to limit the acceptances to only 19 papers; even then the program is much more crowded than had been hoped. Perhaps next year the symposium will have to last longer than just a half a week."

Peter Neumann, Program Chair, Oakland 1982 proceedings frontmatter

For SP19, after careful discussion with the Technical Committee, and reflections on the general sentiment from last year’s TC Business Meeting, we have decided that the best way to highlight our full technical program is by using two parallel sessions. This allows every presenter to have a talk time that is comparable to recent years of the symposium, including time for questions. We intend to video-record the presentations in all sessions. As a new addition, we will feature "Talk Previews" to help attendees plan their program. SP19 will also feature a special, 40th Celebration session to commemorate this landmark in our history.

Ultimately, this year's format is the result of our growing technical program, our existing contracts, and volunteer effort. The symposium's future format, however, is a conversation in which you can participate. This conversation started at SP18, in reaction to the realities of our field's growth and our new rolling submission process. The conversation will continue at SP19, to inform future contracts for our event. You can share your opinion at the TC Business Meeting at SP19 or in a special survey, to be sent after SP19 to conference attendees and the TC mailing list.

We are confident you will find SP19 to be a fun, full and innovative program. We encourage you to book your hotel room in our conference room block for discounted rates; our room block is limited and will fill up fast. We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!

Sincerely,

– Mark and Christopher