False Sense of Security

For the last three days I've been commuting up to Reading to attend a Security Summit, a free event organised by Microsoft. Although I'm certainly not accustomed to setting my alarm for 06:30 every morning, I found it easier than I thought it would be to get up at that time.

The first two days were aimed at IT Professionals whereas the last day was aimed at Developers, which is certainly the category that I fit into of the two. Despite this, I think that I learned a lot from the first two days because I new so little about Windows network admin to start with, whereas the developer day was, in essence, affirming what common programming sense says already.

Thomas Lee was the main speaker on the first day. He talked very well about the topics he covered and kept the attention of the audience by keeping things varied and interspersing anecdotes and real life examples at appropriate times.

The second day was run by Fred Baumhardt who was also an excellent speaker. The topics he covered were more technically focussed and so I think I got more benefit out of this day. A lot of the security pinciples he talked about were backed by ad-libbed demonstrations done in front of us on his laptop, which certainly made the presentation more interesting and educational.

Andy Thomson took the final day, and regardless of the change of focus from admin to a developer's perspective the biggest change was the speaker himself: a relatively quiet guy with a faint Scottish accent was quite a contrast from the fairly loud American and Canadian accents from the previous two days. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the topics covered were really just a case of stating the obvious, although admittedly this wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Overall, the event was well worth attending. Other than the travel cost, it was free, the content was interesting, and the catering (tea, coffee, buffet lunch) was excellent. No such thing as a free lunch, huh? Find out for yourself...