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Semantic Shields: International Workshop on Modeling for Cybersecurity.
Semantic Shields: International Workshop on Modeling for Cybersecurity.
UTFacultiesEEMCSSemantic Shields: International Workshop on Modeling for CybersecuritySemantic Shields 2

Semantic Shields 2

the 2nd INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON MODELING FOR CYBERSECURITY - EDITION 2025

Semantic Shields 2: The 2nd International Workshop on Modeling for Cybersecurity is an event focusing on theoretical aspects and practical applications of conceptual models and ontologies to cybersecurity. The workshop date is September 9, 2025.

Semantic Shields 2 will take place at the University of Catania, Catania, Italy, co-located with the 15th edition of the International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS), the flagship conference of the International Association of Ontology and its Applications (IAOA).

We are working to bring keynote presentations, workshop presentations, and an interactive panel session with industry experts.

Cybersecurity, which concerns both human and technological aspects, refers to a set of techniques used to protect the integrity of networks, programs, and data from attack, damage, or unauthorized access. With the spread of systems and applications, attacks continue to grow in sophistication, with attackers using an ever-expanding variety of tactics such as social engineering, malware, and ransomware. To reduce the risk of cyber-attacks and protect against exploitations, new methods, and technologies are emerging. Formal methods, in particular ontologies, constitute an effective approach to mitigate the incompleteness and ambiguity of security directives and to semantically characterize security stakeholders, ranging from offensive techniques to compliance, vulnerability, encryption, data protection, authentication, confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The “Semantic Shields: International Workshop on Modeling for Cybersecurity” aims to bring together cybersecurity experts, conceptual modelers, and ontologists, from scholars to practitioners, to develop applications, methods, and tools impacting the cybersecurity domain.

Topics of Interest

The workshop topics include but are not limited to:

Important Dates

All deadlines are Anywhere on Earth (AoE = UTC-12h)

Submission Guidelines

The workshop welcomes submissions of full papers, short papers, practitioner reports, and presentations of published works. The respective lengths are:

(Page number includes references)

All accepted papers (except for the abstract of published works) will be published in the Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO) proceedings. At least one author of each accepted paper must register and participate in the workshop. 

Submissions must adhere to the one-column CEUR template. General information on CEUR proceedings can be found here:

The direct link to the Latex template is at Latex (the only acceptable format). We do not accept submissions in docx.  

Submissions need to be uploaded on EasyChair as a single PDF: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=fois2025.

Authors of accepted papers must provide the original source file and submit the author agreement form.

Contributions that include semantic artifacts, methodologies, software, etc, need to adhere to the FAIR guidelines.

All contributions (except for the abstract of published works) to JOWO workshops will be published in a joint CEUR proceedings volume. For comparison, check out some previous publications:

Accepted Papers

Vishal S, Ayon Chakraborty, and Sreenivasa Kumar

PerManOnt: Permission Management Ontology for Smart Devices

Alessandro Mosca, Mattia Fumagalli, Gal Engelberg, Victor D. Corvalan, Dan Klein, Pnina Soffer, Diego Calvanese, and Giancarlo Guizzardi

Beyond Risk Propagation: A Unified Approach

Martin Homola, Peter Anthony, Iveta Bečková, Ján Kľuka, Ján Mojžiš, Peter Švec, Štefan Balogh, Franco Alberto Cardillo, Franca Debole, Umberto Straccia, Martin Kenyeres, Francesco Giannini, Michelangelo Diligenti, Marco Gori, Tomáš Bisták, Daniel Trizna, and Zekeri Adams

A Note on Methods for Explainable Malware Analysis

Program

WHEN: 9 September 2025.

WHERE: Room A6.

The Benedictine Monastery of San Nicolò l’Arena will host FOIS 2025. The Monastery is located in Piazza Dante Alighieri, 32, in the city center of Catania.

14:30 - 14:50 Martin Homola, Peter Anthony, Iveta Bečková, Ján Kľuka, Ján Mojžiš, Peter Švec, Štefan Balogh, Franco Alberto Cardillo, Franca Debole, Umberto Straccia, Martin Kenyeres, Francesco Giannini, Michelangelo Diligenti, Marco Gori, Tomáš Bisták, Daniel Trizna, and Zekeri Adams. A Note on Methods for Explainable Malware Analysis

14:50 - 15:10 Alessandro Mosca, Mattia Fumagalli, Gal Engelberg, Victor D. Corvalan, Dan Klein, Pnina Soffer, Diego Calvanese, and Giancarlo Guizzardi. Beyond Risk Propagation: A Unified Approach

15:10 - 15:30 Vishal S, Ayon Chakraborty, and Sreenivasa Kumar. PerManOnt: Permission Management Ontology for Smart Devices

15:45 - 16:30 Roundtable with the participants.

Organization

Program committee

  • Ítalo Oliveira (University of Twente)

    Gal Engelberg (Accenture)

    Daniele Francesco Santamaria (University of Catania) 

    Avi Shaked (University of Oxford)

    Victor Corvalan (Accenture CIO Security Strategy)

    Gianpietro Castiglione (University of Catania) 

    Giampaolo Bella (University of Catania)

    Manfred Jeusfeld (University of Skövde, School of Informatics)

    Paul Smart (University of Southampton)

    Noemi Scarpato (University Telematica San Raffaele Roma)

    Giancarlo Guizzardi (University of Twente)

    Nicolò Maunero (IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca)

Disclaimer

We ask the members of the FOIS community to pay close attention to phishing and scam attempts. Please follow only trusted sources for information about FOIS 2025 and JOWO 2025:

If you identify a suspicious source of information or a potential case of phishing related to FOIS or JOWO, please report it to fois2025@easychair.org.

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