Tomorrow’s the big day

It’s an early night tonight as tomorrow InfoSec 2005 kicks off. It’s the UK’s biggest security show (barring the annual DESi arms sales show in Docklands) and there’s going to be a lot of interesting stuff going on.

Things are kicking off tomorrow at 8am at a breakfast with Bruce Schneier and, given that you need to be sharp to take the full implications of all he usually says, it’s early to bed and early to rise. Bruce says he’s too hyped for caffeine these days but we’ll all be slurping down the tea to keep up with him.

The Microsoft’s former head of security Stuart Okin will open the conference. Stuart left last year for the heady worlds of Accenture’s consultation arm but he’s a good speaker who’ll drop some interesting gems.

Following in the wake of the WinHEC announcements Microsoft looks to be making a big thing of its 64 bit operating system and all the advantages of that extra complexity in making computers secure. This is particularly good at stopping memory resident worms – the hackers will respond with new methods but it’ll stop script kiddies in their tracks for a while.

Meanwhile every security vendor under the sun is going to be pushing the latest gizmo to deal with security problems both real and imagined. We’ll winnow out the wheat from the chaff and see what comes up.