Conference Round-up

AusCERT 2008 - Gold Coast Australia - May 19 - 23, 2008

Rod Rasmussen was invited to present at the AusCERT 2008 conference as the representative for the Anti-Phishing Working Group.  AusCERT has grown to be the leading Asia-Pacific regional security conference, and this year's proceedings saw over 1,200 participants engage in a full week of cutting edge sessions and workshops on cyber-security.  Rasmussen updated a special e-crime symposium on the APWG's current initiatives, and in the process extended Internet Identity's relationships with worldwide law enforcement and CERT members. 

The presentations throughout the conference were top-notch, and the spirit of collaboration and desire to pool resources were pervasive.  Unfortunately, many sessions also showed some of the emerging threats we are facing, and in many areas things appear to be getting worse. The biggest buzz of the conference was the keynote address by John Stewart, Cisco's Chief Security Officer, where he declared anti-virus to be "completely wasted money".  While we still see tremendous value with A/V products, the newest malware and delivery methodologies to present tough challenges that need to be addressed differently.  One of the scariest of these threats is injections of malware onto your own trusted sites that then infect your own customers.  At Internet Identity, we're actively working on solutions to enable our clients to detect and fend off these types of threats.