Announcing Enigma

A sign of growth at USENIX is the introduction of new conferences supporting emerging and growing communities. Following the successful launch of SREcon, geared toward site reliability engineering, we're excited to announce Enigma, a security-themed conference focused on emerging threats and novel attacks.

Enigma will take place January 25-27, 2016, in San Francisco. Elie Bursztein and I developed the concept for this event upon realizing the need for a vendor-neutral, Bay Area conference featuring truly cutting-edge practices. Enigma will focus on immediately useful responses to attacks, which are currently dramatically increasing in scope. The conference will lean more heavily toward the latest practices employed by engineers on the frontlines—both offensive and defensive—as opposed to the USENIX Security Symposium, which focuses on innovative systems. In turn, Enigma is meant to appeal primarily to the industry sector as opposed to the research sector. Nonetheless, academics are welcome to contribute talks, and their research could benefit from the ideas presented at Enigma. Submissions are welcome through September 14, 2015. The program will feature only one track of 30-minute, high-quality, peer-reviewed talks as opposed to refereed paper presentations—another departure from USENIX Security. The Bay Area location, where many top security practitioners live and work, is convenient for fostering collaboration.

We are thrilled to announce that Google will serve as our Founding Sponsor, providing us with sufficient financial backing to launch such a large-scale event. We’re actively seeking additional industry sponsorship to ensure long-term sustainability; please contact sponsorship@usenix.org to hear about the opportunities.

We hope to see you at the inaugural Enigma in 2016. If you’re interested in attending, be sure to sign up at enigma.usenix.org.

Casey Henderson