Invitation from the General Chair

Computer systems and communications networks now pervade every aspect of our daily lives. While that has benefited society and increased our productivity, it has also made our lives more critically dependent on their correct functioning. The traditional concerns of the dependability community (e.g., inadvertent faults, errors, and failures) have now been enlarged by the massive connectivity provided by the Internet to include malicious exploitation of imperfect systems and networks and intentional cyber-attacks on them. How can we build systems that are not vulnerable to such threats, systems that users can depend upon in transportation, financial, and e-commerce sectors, or even just for entertainment?

DSN 2004 will be held in Florence, Italy. DSN 2004 represents the continuation of over three decades of tradition in the field of dependable computing. The conference will have multiple tracks of refereed papers, including the Dependable Computing and Communications Symposium (DCCS) and the Performance and Dependability Symposium (PDS). There will also be Workshops, Tutorials, a Student Forum, and Fast Abstracts to highlight late-breaking research.

DSN is the premier forum for researchers, practitioners, and users to learn and exchange informati on on the latest research results in dependable systems and networks. Detailed conference information is available at: http://www.dsn.org and don’t forget to enjoy art, culture, history and more... in Florence in 2004! Luca Simoncini