WOSOC 2026
Workshop on SOC Operations and Construction
23 February 2026
San Diego, CA, USA
The Workshop on SOC Operations and Construction (WOSOC), is the premier forum for academic researchers and security operators to share insights on this rapidly evolving and increasingly professional field. WOSOC is now soliciting proposals and papers for its 2026 forum.
We solicit proposals from both operators and researchers on two separate tracks — operators can submit talk proposals to discuss their work and experience, while researchers submit short papers. Accepted proposals will be presented and discussed at the forum. WOSOC is an open workshop, but in order to enable serious discussion of operational security topics, the workshop will adhere to the Chatham House Rule.
- Talks and presentations will not be recorded
- Academic papers and operational talk abstracts will be published in proceedings; presentations are not published.
Important Dates
| Paper Submissions Due | |
| Talk Proposals Due | 22 December 2025 (AoE) |
| Notification to Authors | 9 January 2026 (AoE) |
| Camera Ready Submission | 30 January 2026 (AoE) |
| Workshop Date | 23 February 2026 (co-located with NDSS 2026) |
Accepted Papers
Accepted Papers
Call for Papers
Areas of Interest
- SOC design and construction
- SOC workflow and operations
- Alert management, triage and prioritization
- Incident response case studies
- Network management techniques for encrypted traffic flows
- Increasing SOC efficiency through automation
- Threat hunting
- Operational visualization and data summarization
- Intelligence gathering, enrichment, and operations
- Security operations specific to particular fields or domains
- Integration of agentic AI in SOC workflows
- Human factors in SOC operations
- Training, development and managing burnout
WOSOC welcomes submissions from any disciplinary perspective to the above topics, including but not limited to computer science, economics, psychology, criminology, political science, law, and information systems.
Submissions
WOSOC will accept short papers and talk proposals. Researchers shall submit short papers on ongoing or planned work that can be read by participants in advance of the event. Operators shall submit talk proposals to share insights, case studies and novel ideas. The 2026 workshop will schedule 20 minute slots for all speakers, broken into 15 minute talk followed by a 5 minute Q&A period.
Submission Instructions: Short Papers
WOSOC short papers can cover emerging research, work in progress and position papers. Short papers must be between 4–8 pages excluding references. Papers must be submitted in Portable Document Format (.pdf) and must use the NDSS templates.
Papers must be formatted for US letter size (not A4) paper in a two-column layout, with columns no more than 9.25 in. high and 3.5 in. wide. The text must be in Times font, 10-point or larger, with 11-point or larger line spacing.
Submission Instructions: Talk Proposals
WOSOC talk proposals are intended to provide operational personnel a mechanism to discuss SOC-related topics at the workshop. Talk proposals must be submitted in text format, and contain the following information:
- Title of the talk
- A single paragraph abstract; this abstract will be published in the pre-proceedings upon acceptance
- One–two paragraphs outlining the talk
- A speaker biography and affiliation
Further Information
Questions about the workshop, suitability of topics and other issues should be emailed to mcollins@isi.edu.
Organization
Program Co-Chairs
- Michael Collins, USC-ISI
- Chris Fennell, Walmart
Steering Committee
- Alex Bardas, University of Kansas
- Alefiya Hussain, USC-ISI
- Jeffery Janies, Deloitte
- Tyler Moore, The University of Tulsa
- Nolen Scaife, Walmart
- Xinming Ou, University of South Florida
Program Committee
- Tiffany Bao, Arizona State University
- Rakesh Bobba, Oregon State University
- Kevin Butler, University of Florida
- Debabrata Dash, Arista Networks
- Josiah Dykstra, RTX BBN
- Adhip Gupta, Meta
- Francis Hahn, University of South Florida
- Wes Hardaker, Google
- Casey King, Yale
- Shawn McGhee, Saks Global
- Andrew Morin, The University of Tulsa
- Mridu Nanda, Duke University
- Dave Nevin, Oregon State University
- Ganesh Sankran, RENCI
- Aaron Shelmire, Abstract Security
- Kashyap Thimmaraju, TU Berlin
- Christopher Tran, USC-ISI