EnCyCriS 2026

The 2026 International Workshop on Engineering and Cybersecurity of Critical Systems (EnCyCriS) will take place on Saturday Apr 18 (date confirmed) in the Windsor Barra Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This marks the 7th edition of EnCyCriS at the ICSE conference.

For industrial critical systems, although the previous premises of increasing system interconnectivity, decentralization, and introduction of new, more intelligent technologies still hold true, there is an increased societal awareness with regards to cybersecurity. This has led to clearer regulation, sharper requirements, and higher expectations for industry. At the same time, the availability of readily deployable competence, methods, tools, and solutions is lacking, which should be considered a critical societal risk.

In the current international political climate, cyber security, and safety of critical infrastructures across industry, are more important than ever before. The EnCyCriS workshop facilitates discourse and discussion amongst researchers, practitioners, and students who are working on challenges and solutions related to industrial critical infrastructure. It has a particular focus on sharing industry experience and project results pertaining to cyber threats on critical systems, secure systems engineering, and attack detection and response mechanisms.

Previous editions

• EnCyCriS 2025 was co-located with ICSE 2025 in Ottawa, Canada.
• EnCyCriS/SVM 2024 was co-located with ICSE 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.
• EnCyCriS 2023 was co-located with ICSE 2023 in Melbourne, Australia.
• EnCyCriS 2022 was co-located with ICSE 2022 in Pittsburgh, USA.
• EnCyCriS 2021 was co-located with ICSE 2021 online.
• EnCyCriS 2020 was co-located with ICSE 2020 online.

Accepted Papers

	Title
	A Comprehensive Framework to Secure CBTC Communications EnCyCriS Amin Fakhereldine, Mohammad Zulkernine, Jessica Alecci, Will Hickie
	all together : picture EnCyCriS
	An Overview of Cyber Security Funding for Open Source Software EnCyCriS Jukka Ruohonen, Gaurav Choudhary Choudhary, Adam Alami
	A Transfer Learning Approach to Unveil the Role of Windows Common Configuration Enumerations in IEC 62443 Compliance EnCyCriS Miguel Bicudo, Estevao Rabello, Daniel Sadoc Menasche, Paulo Segal, Claudio Segal, Anton Kocheturov, Priyanjan Sharma Pre-print
	Behind the Quantum Curtain: A practical comparison between SVM and QSVM in OT Anomaly Detection EnCyCriS Alessio Di Santo, Nicola Camarda, Walter Tiberti, Dajana Cassioli
	LLM-Assisted AHP for Explainable Cyber Range Evaluation EnCyCriS Vyron Kampourakis, Georgios Kavallieratos, Georgios Spathoulas, Vasileios Gkioulos, Sokratis Katsikas
	Main panel discussions EnCyCriS
	MCP-Scanner: Detecting Security Risks in Model Context Protocol Systems EnCyCriS Parya Abadeh, Martin Lochner, Taha Ansari, Fattane Zarrinkalam
	Real-Time Anomaly Detection in Web Server Logs Using Machine Learning and Apache Kafka EnCyCriS Valentina Rojas Osorio, Ángel Jimenez Molina, Cecilia Bastarrica, Felipe Vildoso Castillo
	Reflections and Factors in Applying Threat Modelling Tools for Cybersecurity Certification in Critical Infrastructure EnCyCriS Ahmed Amro, Vasileios Gkioulos, Claudia Lutze, Jean-Marie Lauranson, Maria I. Maslioukova, Pavlos Kosmides, Christina Michailidou, Pedro-Tito Macías-Roselló, Evgeny Prokofyev, Antoliano Davila, Tanel Kerstna, Per Myrseth, Meine Van Der Meulen
	Towards a Cognitive-Support Tool for Threat Hunters EnCyCriS Alessandra Maciel Paz Milani, Norman Anderson, Margaret-Anne Storey Pre-print
	Workshop Closure EnCyCriS Coralie Esnoul
	Workshop Opening EnCyCriS Coralie Esnoul

Call for Papers

We are delighted to announce the 7th International Workshop on Engineering and Cybersecurity of Critical Systems (EnCyCriS), organized in conjunction with the 48th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2026). The workshop will take place the day after the main ICSE conference, on Saturday Apr 18 (date confirmed) in the Windsor Barra Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

EnCyCriS offers an opportunity for the sharing of thoughts and experiences between researchers, practitioners, and students in the domain of the engineering and cybersecurity of critical software-based systems and infrastructures. Submissions may consider the following topics:

• Integrated safety and security software engineering processes and methods for critical infrastructures (CI).

• Secure development of critical software-based systems across the entire lifecycle

• Operational cybersecurity challenges related to the introduction of novel technologies in CI, including evaluating effectiveness of risk models, detection and response tools, and methods.

• Human factors with respect to knowledge, preparedness and how to operationalize cyberattack response for CI, covering both technical and organizational factors.

• Safety and security assessment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools and methods in the life cycle processes of critical software-based systems.

• The use and effectiveness of tools and methods for improving CI, including but not limited to digital twins, AI, ML, Hardware In-the-Loop test beds.

• Operational challenges and solutions in planning for , detecting, understanding and mitigating cyberattacks

• Industry experiences and projects in the areas of cybersecurity of critical software-based systems; secure software engineering; cyber-attack detection and response mechanisms.

This workshop highly values experience and lessons learned from industry, and academic papers where research projects have been applied in an industrial context.

Submission

Deadline extended to November 2nd – There will be no more extension.

We accept research, position papers and industrial papers in different categories:

• full papers (8 pages max)

• extended abstracts (5 pages max)

All page limits include all figures, tables, and references. It is not possible to buy extra pages.

Please submit your work to the HotCrp EnCyCriS site, https://icse2026-encycris.hotcrp.com. All submissions must follow the official ACM Primary Article Template. You can find the template on the ACM Proceedings Template Page. If you are a LaTeX user, please use \documentclass[sigconf,review]{acmart} in the preamble of the main file. Workshop proceedings will be prepared by IEEE CPS and published in the ACM Digital Library and IEEE eXplore Digital Library.

Extended abstracts will be free of Article Processing Charges (APCs) as per the new ACM policies for open-access publishing. Full papers will not.

If a submission is accepted, at least one author must register for the EnCyCriS workshop and present the work.