Keynote Presentation: Accountability in Computing

Accountability is used often in describing computer-security mechanisms that complement preventive security, but it lacks a precise, agreed-upon definition. Here, we argue for the need for accountability in computing in a variety of settings, categorize some of the many ways in which this term is used, and propose a punishment-focused view of "accountability." We formalize our view in a utility-theoretic way and then use this to reason about accountability in computing systems. We also survey mechanisms providing various senses of accountability as well as other approaches to reasoning about accountability-related properties.

This is joint work with Joan Feigenbaum and Aaron Jaggard.

Dr. Rebecca Wright is the Druckenmiller Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Vagelos Computational Science Center at Barnard. She is currently on leave from Rutgers University, where she served as director of the DIMACS center and as the founding faculty advisor for the Douglass-SAS-DIMACS Computer Science Living-Learning Community for first-year Rutgers women in Computer Science. Wright's research is primarily in the area of information security, including privacy, applied cryptography, foundations of computer security, and fault-tolerant distributed computing. Wright serves as an editor of the International Journal of Information and Computer Security and of the Transactions on Data Privacy, and is a member of the board of the Computer Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W). She received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale University, a B.A. from Columbia University, and an honorary M.E. from Stevens Institute of Technology. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Distinguished Member of the ACM.