Australia Report

I'm fresh back from Australia where I had the honor of speaking to the Sydney SBS Usergroup on Common ISA Configuration Scenarios for Small Business. I found, much to my surprise that a bunch of IT Tech people getting together in the evening to learn something new eat pizza supplied by Microsoft the world around. :)

And that when they are touring you around town that they will stop to make fun of computer errors on screens in public places. This one is in the window of a Sydney bookstore. Unfortunately a member of our group also recorded the administrator of the subway system computer systems typing in the administrator password in clear text up on the screen in plain view of everyone at the station. A call was made to the CIO of the Sydney public transit.


After this bit of fun it was off to present at the Security Summit. The Security Summit was sponsored by Trend Micro, who covered a chunk of my costs for traveling and staying in Syndey in exchange for my speaking to the attendees. The keynote address was given by the CTO of Trend Micro himself. He proceeded to scare all of us half to death as he educated us on the Russian Business Network, international crime rings and the amazing feats and volume of new malware that appears everyday. There are now 5000 new malware applications released everyday!

I was joined on stage by Eriq Neale, author of SBS 2003 Unleashed and former Microsoft Product Support Services employee and we spoke about securing remote access to networks. We both do a lot of remote support work for other consultants around the world and have seen some pretty aweful server configurations.

All in all, it was a great trip and I got to feed and pet a Walabi!