Welcome to the official website of HIDDEN LAYERS (Research Meets Practice): Enterprise Risk, AI Forensics, and Image Security.
We propose the 1st edition of HIDDEN LAYERS, a workshop to be held in conjunction with 30th International Conference on Enterprise Design, Operations, and Computing (EDOC) / 28th International Conference on Business Informatics (CBI) (September 15–18, 2026, University of Twente). The workshop focuses on the intersection of Enterprise Risk, AI Forensics, and Image Security, aiming to bridge academic research with practical industry applications.
Modern enterprises increasingly rely on AI-driven systems and digital media, which introduces new security challenges. These include vulnerabilities discovered through forensic investigations, malicious content embedded in digital images, adversarial attacks on AI systems, and human-centric threats such as social engineering and insider attacks. By bringing together researchers, practitioners, and industry experts, HIDDEN LAYERS aims to:
- foster interdisciplinary collaboration,
- promote knowledge exchange between research and practice, and
- stimulate discussion on emerging methodologies, tools, and best practices in enterprise image security and forensic AI.
Detailed Workshop Program
The workshop will take place in INFORM room.
Fanfei Liu, Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at Signify
Each paper presentation is 15 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for Q&A, with a 5 minute buffer.
Keynote Speaker
Speaker: Fanfei Liu, Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at Signify, The Netherlands.
The Hidden Layers of Trust: What Ransomware Negotiations Teach Us About Digital Trust
Keynote Description
Trust is fundamental to how we interact with people, organizations, and increasingly, digital systems. But what happens when trust must be established with someone who is inherently untrustworthy?
Ransomware negotiations offer an extreme case. Victims negotiate anonymously with criminals who have already compromised their systems, stolen their data, and demonstrated malicious intent. Yet for a negotiation to succeed, both sides still need a minimum level of trust.
Drawing on research combining interviews with experienced ransomware negotiation professionals and analysis of real-world ransomware negotiation chats, this keynote explores how trust is constructed under these highly adversarial conditions. The findings challenge conventional assumptions about trust: trust does not necessarily depend on goodwill or shared values. Instead, it can emerge through verifiable ability, predictable and consistent behaviour, reputation, and narrowly scoped commitments. Benevolence, meanwhile, plays a different role by shaping interpersonal rapport rather than providing a reliable basis for trust.
Using ransomware negotiation as a lens, the keynote then asks a broader question: What can these extreme interactions teach us about trust in today's digital world? From cyber threat intelligence and enterprise security to AI and synthetic media, as it becomes increasingly difficult to know who - or what - is behind a digital interaction, perhaps the important question is no longer simply "Can I trust this?" but rather: "What exactly am I trusting?"
The keynote invites researchers and practitioners to reconsider trust not as a binary state, but as something contextual, bounded, and continuously evaluated.
Call for Papers
We invite original research and industry papers for the 1st edition of HIDDEN LAYERS (Research Meets Practice): Enterprise Risk, AI Forensics, and Image Security.
This workshop bridges academic research with practical applications, emphasizing enterprise image security and forensic AI.
Workshop Topics
Enterprise Cybersecurity and Risk Management:
- Enterprise cybersecurity challenges
- Threat modeling and mitigation strategies
- Governance, compliance, and risk management
- Deployment and evaluation of forensic frameworks
- Industry case studies highlighting real-world risks and mitigation approaches
- Human-centric threats such as social engineering, insider threats, and cybercrime affecting organizational security
- Usable security and privacy methods and frameworks for images/video
AI Forensics:
- AI-based forensic methods
- Deep learning & anomaly detection for forensic analysis
- Validation, explainability, and robustness of forensic AI
- Attacks against AI systems (adversarial ML)
- AI forensics: organisational, legal, policy, and socio-technical requirements
Image and Digital Media Security:
- Image steganography & steganalysis
- Detection of hidden or malicious content (e.g., stego-malware)
- Deepfakes, fake news, and synthetic media detection
- AI-generated images analysis
- Biometric security and authentication
- Privacy-preserving AI techniques for image security
- Usable security and privacy methods and frameworks for image-based vulnerabilities
Application Domains
We welcome empirical research papers, experience reports, and case studies from all domains.
Submission Types
- Short Papers (4 pages)
- Position Papers (4 pages)
- Full Papers (8 pages)
- Industry Reports (4 pages)
Workshop Venue
The workshop will be held in conjunction with 30th International Conference on Enterprise Design, Operations, and Computing (EDOC) / 28th International Conference on Business Informatics (CBI) (Sept 15–18, 2026, University of Twente).
Important Dates
- Paper submission:
June 12th, 2026June 28th, 2026 (AoE) - Notification of Acceptance:
July 17th, 2026July 26th, 2026 - Camera-ready: August 7th, 2026
- Workshop: September 15th, 2026
Paper Submission
All submissions should be made in PDF format and comply with the Springer LNCS/LNBIP conference proceedings template:
Springer Proceedings Guidelines
Please submit your paper via EasyChair at: EasyChair link
At least one author of each accepted workshop paper will have to register for the whole EDOC 2026 + CBI 2026 conference and attend the workshop to present the paper.
Committee
The committees are experts from academia and industry in enterprise risk, AI forensics, cybersecurity, and image security.
Workshop Co-Chairs
- Dipti K. Sarmah - University of Twente, The Netherlands.
- I Putu Arya Dharmaadi - University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
- Marianne Junger - University of Twente, The Netherlands.
- Claudia Negri Ribalta - ULIDE (The University of Luxembourg Institute for Digital Ethics), Luxembourg.
Program Committee
- Wojciech Mazurczyk - Warsaw University of Technology (WUT), Poland
- Rajeev Kumar - Delhi Technological University, India
- Anastasija Collen - University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland, Switzerland
- Christina Kolb - University of Twente, The Netherlands
- Fadi Mohsen - University of Groningen, The Netherlands
- Gurinder Singh - Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio, United States
- I Made Sukarsa - Udayana University, Indonesia
- Ali Reza Ghavamipour - Maastricht University, the Netherlands
- Jan-Willem Bullee - University of Twente, The Netherlands
- Jayanta Mukhopadhyay - Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India
- Kes Greuter - Signify, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
- Marianne Junger - University of Twente, The Netherlands
- Raphael Hoheisel - University of Twente, The Netherlands
- Salijona Dyrmishi - Swift, The Netherlands
- Tariq Bontekoe - University of Groningen, The Netherlands
- Gabriele Lenzini - University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
- Frank Pallas - Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, Austria
- Peter Browne Rønne - University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
- Alejandro Hevia - Universidad de Chile, Chile
- Soumia Zohra El Mestari - University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
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