The view so far - WorldComp 2008

From my privileged position as co-chair and session organiser I have a good view of the big picture at WorldComp in Las Vegas. It seems from the levels of attendance and the intensity of post-presentation discussions that two areas are standing out as hot topics at this year's Security and Management conference:

• Digital forensics is a field that is just transforming into a discipline with a substantial push towards process and procedure. Professor Erbacher from Utah State University explained the complexity of issues surrounding digital forensics and stressed that this is far from a solved problem. Interested parties are looking forward to his tutorial tomorrow evening.

• The second hot topic, represented in half a dozen papers, is the one-time password systems of which the theoretical discussion by the PINoptic team has been the best attended session thus far. Other researchers from the US and India have also addressed this area with an excellent review of related work presented by Kenrick Mock from the University of Anchorage in Alaska. Interested researchers in this area are using the conference to establish informal relationships to make sure the advantages of the approach are best utilised commercially. Definitely an idea whose time has arrived!

With a busy schedule of talks, discussions and technical meetings still to come there's plenty more to look forward to.

Signing off for now, Mark Bedworth CTO PINoptic Ltd.

SAM'08 Kicks Off

SAM '08 started and the first keynote lecture was from Dave Patterson,
Pardee Professor of Computer Science at University of California,
Berkeley.  He presented an interesting insight into computing several
years from now, but warned that the sector is facing a crisis. 
Computing power increases are no longer following Moore or 2 x Moore,
since a physical barrier has been reached.  Patterson urged more
development effort in parallel computing, especially in the area of
software capable of using the parallel processor environment.  He also
suggested that those experienced in programming for parallel computing
produce a structure embodying the tools to enable those less able, to
port their existing and new software maybe developed in a single
processor environment to make use of the power of parallel computing.

There are those who argue that parallel computing is not the solution,
but Patterson put up a convincing argument.

The start of blogging

Hardly had we begun pushing PINoptic, then along came the opportunity to present 3 papers at the SAM '08 conference in Las Vegas in July 2008. This conference is one of the premier world conferences for security and access management. Peer review of our submissions produced some very positive reactions and valuable feedback on the suitability of the papers for the conference.