The 6th International Workshop on Visualization for Cyber Security is a forum that brings together researchers and practitioners in information visualization and security to address the specific needs of the cyber security community through new and insightful visualization techniques. Co-located this year with IEEE InfoVis/Vis/VAST, VizSec will continue to provide opportunities for the two communities to collaborate and share insights into providing solutions for security needs through visualization approaches. Accepted papers will be published by the IEEE and archived in the IEEE Digital Library. The authors of the best papers will be invited to extend and revise their paper for journal publication in a special issue of Information Visualization.

This year our focus is on advancing Visualization for Cyber Security as a scientific discipline. While art, engineering, and intuitions regarding the human element will always remain important if we are to obtain useful cyber security visualizations, advances in the scientific practice of research are needed. The scientific aspects of visualization for cyber security draw both on empirical observation (similar to many natural and social sciences) and formal science (such as the formal derivations in mathematics). Barriers confronting current researchers include concerns about available data, lack of a common agreement about what constitutes sound experimental design, the difficulties of measuring the relative effectiveness of security visualizations in practice, and the lack of a common understanding of user requirements. While many researchers are making progress in these and other critical areas, much work yet remains.

Papers offering novel contributions in security visualization are solicited. Papers may present technique, applications, practical experience, theory, or experiments and evaluations. Papers are encouraged on technologies and methods that have been demonstrated to be useful for improving information systems security and that address lessons from actual application. We encourage papers that report results on visualization techniques and systems in solving all aspects of cyber security problems, including how visualization applies to:

• Different aspects of security: software, networks and log files (e.g., Internet routing, packet traces and network flows, intrusion detection alerts, attack graphs, application security, etc.)
• Application of visualization techniques in formalizing, defining and analyzing security policies
• Forensic analysis, correlating events, cyber-defense task analysis
• Computer network defense training and offensive information operations
• Building rules, feature selection, and detecting anomalous activity
• Software, software security, and viruses
• Deployment and field testing of VizSec systems
• Evaluation and user testing of VizSec systems
• User and design requirements for VizSec systems
• Lessons learned from development and deployment of VizSec systems
• Field Research Best Practices
• Interaction with domain experts - best practices, lessons learned
• Differentiating the needs of different domains and time frames
• Best practices for obtaining and sharing potentially sensitive data for purposes of visualization and assessment, including how to approach personal privacy, regulatory, and organizational issues
• Metrics and measurements (e.g., criteria for the relative effectiveness of cyber visualizations)
• Handling large datasets, scalability issues, and providing real time or near-real time visualizations