HealthSec2026
https://publish.illinois.edu/healthsec2026/
"CYBERSECURITY IN HEALTHCARE" (HealthSec)2026!
An IEEE ACSAC42 Workshop
(see HealthSec 2025, HealthSec 2024)
An interdisciplinary one-day workshop to be co-located with the Annual
Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC42)
Archive of previous HealthSec Workshops:
HealthSec’24
HealthSec’25
===
CALL-FOR-PAPERS
In its most basic form, healthcare is gathering data, interpreting
data into information, and transforming information into current human
knowledge that can be acted upon, with each of these stages open to
unintended errors and/or malicious subversion. These stages do not
occur within a vacuum but rather within our existing infrastructures
and social system with all their current limitations, systemic bias,
and exploitable vulnerabilities. While a similar characterization can
be made about security in other applied domains, healthcare is
undergoing a dramatic transformation, arguably a technological
revolution, presenting ground-breaking opportunities for improvement
along with corresponding challenges in security.
Our desire is to bring together diverse researchers from academia,
government, and the healthcare industry to report on the latest
research efforts. As this is the third workshop, we want to continue
momentum toward encouraging, jumpstarting, and growing excellent
interdisciplinary contributions at the forefront of cybersecurity in
healthcare research. Papers with demonstrated results will be given
priority. We seek submissions from researchers and practitioners on a
list of potential topics which includes, but is not limited to:
Cybersecurity issues (including risks, challenges, incidences,
solutions, approaches)
Healthcare as critical national infrastructure
AI in healthcare (e.g. clinical decision support software, ambient
clinical documentation)
Big data/high performance computing (HPC) in healthcare
Storage encryption, authentication, provenance in healthcare environments
Healthcare supply chain resilience
Cyberbiosecurity
Digital Twins
Online health communities and patient portals
Health information exchanges (HIEs)
Electronic health records (EHRs)
Hospital-at-Home, Telemedicine, Telehealth
Internet of (medical) Things (MIoT)
Medical devices, medical implants, and/or medical wearables
Wireless/mobile healthcare and/or remote patient monitoring
Digital healthcare tools and safety engineering to improve patient safety
Human factors safety engineering in clinical facility settings
Healthcare insider threats
Software-controlled robotic medical systems
Updating/patching software and re-certification of medical devices
Food Insecurity as a Healthcare concern
Applications of STAMP/CAST/STPA techniques to healthcare
Ransomware attacks on healthcare – especially hospitals (see Note 1 below)
Events resulting in (HIPAA/GDPR) healthcare privacy breaches (see
Note 2 below)
Comparisons of IT infrastructure in different types of healthcare
facilities/services
Empirical study of cybersecurity in a specific healthcare IT environment
Policy/Legal/Ethical position papers – addressing healthcare
cybersecurity issues
Economics of healthcare cybersecurity
Technical efforts by governmental entities to improve
cybersecurity in healthcare
Papers with the following as their only foci are discouraged and will
be rejected a priori:
Cybersecurity best practice recommendations for healthcare
Note 1- Papers are discouraged which are longitudinal studies
showing increasing cyberattacks on healthcare based on HHS/OCR or
proprietary data sets – HHS/OCR data is poor quality and
proprietary datasets are non-replicable artifacts
Note 2- Papers are discouraged which mix analysis of privacy
breaches with ransomware outages
Questions about your paper topic, then please email the workshop chair in advance!
===
IMPORTANT HealthSec 2026 DATES:
Paper Submission Deadline {all paper categories}: Friday July 24
2026 Friday August 7, 2026
Paper Review Deadline for PC Members: Friday August 28 2026
Friday, Sept 4, 2026
Paper Acceptance Notification to Authors: Saturday September 19
2026 Saturday September 26, 2026
Camera-Ready Accepted Paper Deadline: Sunday November 1, 2026 (no
extensions)
HealthSec 2026 Workshop Date: Tuesday December 8, 2026
===
PAPER SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Five (5) Paper Submission Categories
Regular technical paper submissions between 7-12 pages including references
Short technical paper submissions between 2-6 pages including references
Lightning/Poster technical paper submissions between 1-2 pages
including references
Case Study paper submissions between 2-6 pages including references
Position paper (opinion/invited paper) submissions between 2-12
pages [note – please email workshop chair in advance of the
deadline to discuss your position paper ideas]
All submitted papers are required to be in the US Letter (not A4)
double-column IEEE format which will be strictly enforced. IEEE
format templates are available at:
In order to help peer review purposes, please make the title of your
submitted paper to include a prefix indicating your selected paper
submission category – this prefix will be removed when your paper is
published! For example:
"Regular Paper: Title"
"Short Paper: Title"
"Lightening Paper: Title"
"Poster Paper: Title"
"Case Study Paper: Title"
"Position Paper: Title "
LaTeX submissions must use the IEEEtran.cls version 1.8b template with the \documentclass[conference,compsoc]{IEEEtran} documentclass option.
Papers must be NON-BLINDED clearly listing each author’s organizational affiliation and contact information for one corresponding author. Paper submissions not meeting these specified format guidelines risk rejection without consideration of paper merits.
All papers must be submitted through the HotCRP HealthSec-2026
paper submission system at this link:
.
Accepted papers published in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library
workshop proceedings!
Selected post-workshop revised papers will also be published by
Springer Nature in a separate book workshop proceedings!
For each accepted paper – at least one author must register for
the HealthSec Workshop – and attend in-person – with each accepted
paper presented in-person at the workshop. Unfortunately the
HealthSec Workshop does not have funds for paper authors and we
realize the workshop registration fee and travel cost (airfare +
hotel) represents a significant cost barrier. As a result, if you
are not able to handle the cost for an author to register and
physically attend and present your paper at the workshop then
please do not submit a paper. Special cases may be handled on a
case-by-case basis in coordination with the ASCAC42 Conference
Organizers. Accepted papers not presented in-person at the
HealthSec 2026 workshop may have their acceptance withdrawn and
paper not published. This in-person attendance requirement is the
current reality of research conference economic viability.
WORKSHOP PARTICIPATION VIA ATTENDANCE – REGISTRATION DETAILS
If you are interested in attending, check the appropriate box on the
ACSAC 2026 conference registration form and add "CYBERSECURITY IN
HEALTHCARE" (HealthSec) Workshop fee.
We welcome all participants! – Including those newly attracted to this
research space as well as those who live in this research space such
that they may be tempted to swim to Hawaii to attend! One of the
unique things about our inclusive community is that our research space
indeed touches everyone and each of us has some experience to share
and/or expert knowledge to contribute. This research space is large
enough for all of us so please join us – where everyone knows your
name – and they’re always glad you came! There are no strangers in
our workshop community, only friends who have not met yet!
A non-US citizen who seeks to travel to the Hawaii in the United
States generally must first obtain a U.S. visa. Visas are placed in
the traveler’s passport, a travel document issued by the traveler’s
country of citizenship. Certain international travelers may be
eligible to travel to the United States without a visa if they meet
the requirements for visa-free travel. For additional detailed
information about the visa process, please check what the requirements
are to travel from your country to the USA, and access this link on
the ACSAC 2026 conference website .
PLEASE PLAN AHEAD TO ALLOW ENOUGH TIME (WEEKS/MONTHS) FOR THE
MULTI-STEP VISA PROCESS TO EXECUTE, THIS IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.
===
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===
Workshop Chairs / Organizing Committee:
CHAIR – William (Bill) Yurcik, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services (CMS) [healthsec DOT chair AT gmail DOT com]
VICE-CHAIR – Gregory Pluta, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(UIUC) [gpluta AT illinois DOT edu]
VICE-CHAIR – Scott Kruse, University of Texas at El Paso [cskruse
AT utep DOT edu]
VICE-CHAIR – Gregory Koenig, PhD/MBA & Independent Researcher
[koenig AT acm DOT org]
VICE-CHAIR & LOCAL SITE COORDINATOR FOR Los Angeles– [to be announced!]
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HealthSec 2026 WORKSHOP PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
presently being formed...
If you would like to volunteer to be on the HealthSec 2026 program
committee and peer review workshop paper submissions then please email
the workshop chair!
===