OK, April 1st is here and the networking world has not come to an end. Yes, Conficker changed control servers, but there haven’t been reports of changes in payload, or of major disruptions to networks due to increased traffic. It seems that most of us have dodged a bullet (yet again), though I’m not aware of any security folks who are resting easy these days. The question of “what’s next?” keeps coming back to disturb the sleep of most people who do any real thinking about I.T. security.

If there’s a silver lining in the conficker cloud, it’s that security awareness has gone up for many people. That’s a good thing, though waiting until a threat has appeared tends to make preparations rather less effective (though much more urgent) than doing things in advance.

So here’s the real question: Was conficker a major event for you? I gave a couple of interviews to local newspaper and radio reporters doing general-audience stories on the worm — they got it mostly right — but I haven’t talked to any network or security admins who have wrestled with significant conficker-based issues? I’m curious — if it wasn’t an issue for you, do you attribute it to a great patch-management regimen or really good anti-malware software? Let me know in the comments here, and we’ll see if any sort of pattern begins to emerge…

Speaking of in advance planning, now’s a good time to be thinking about the conference at Interop. In terms of defending against intrusion and malware, you can choose sessions like Ready, Set, Attack! and Anatomy of Attack. Don’t forget that there are free sessions, available to all Interop attendees, sessions like Attacks under the Microscope and New Horizons in Network Security.

I had thought about listing some of the security companies that will be exhibiting on the Interop vendor floor, but the vendor list on the information security page has 87 companies. Let’s just say that the usual suspects will be there, along with some new companies doing new things. I’ll plan to have more details after I’ve had a chance to talk with engineers at some of the firms.

This is my first post here in the Inside Interop blog, and I look forward to talking about technology and the companies that bring it to market. Do me a favor — let me know what you’d like to see here — interviews, news stories, technology coverage, or something else entirely. I think the best blogs are conversations between blogger and reader, and that’s what I’d like this one to be.

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