Olympia to Smithfields

[major_clanger]

Infosecurity 2003 was, according to some of the attendees, not as good as previous years' shows, which is to say it only filled the main hall at Olympia instead of spilling out and upstairs. It was certainly fairly full, and some of the exhibitors I talked to commented that Thursday, as the final day of the show, was actually fairly quiet. Not surprisingly, the main focus this year was on wireless network security, with seemingly every other stand offering a product to let your staff log into the corporate WAN from the airport Starbucks without risk of interception. In between all this, the anti-virus vendors were still prominent (two of the biggest stands were Sophos and Symantec; I was amused to see that some wit had put them next to one another) but quite a few vendors were offering anti-spam solutions as well.

However, the real money is clearly to be made in the branded clothing business. If you're going to display your geeks in public, then clearly the way to do it is in a uniform of chinos and a blue denim shirt with your logo tastefully embroidered over the breast pocket. (Oddly enough Cisco, despite being infamous for selling products only in blue, decked our their staff in maroon.) Hewlett-Packard were the Men And Women In Black. And no prizes for guessing what colour Symantec wore. Nonetheless, some trade exhibition habits die hard, and many companies went for the traditional tactic of (a) round up all their young female staff, (b) give them all a very tight t-shirt with the corporate logo, and (c) send them off with a huge pile of leaflets.

Amidst all the traipsing around picking up tat (I scored an HP baseball cap - black of course - a Symantec mug - guess - and a rather nice rucksack from Novell) there was also a technical seminar track. The two I sat in on were both quite interesting; someone from QinetiQ on the future of forensic computing, then Eugene Kapersky of Kapersky Labs on Internet security. The forensics talk was quite provocative, taking the position that 'computer forensic science' isn't - it's still more a hodge-podge of rules of thumb, and most prosecutions succeed only because defence lawyers don't know enough about computer security to rip open the holes in most evidence. But the lawyers will wise up soon, and the computer forensics community will need to formalise and regulate its approach pretty sharpish if it is to stay in business. Kapersky's talk was by contrast suprisingly conservative, in that he came out strongly in favour of a more regulated Internet as the only defence against a 'Net whose traffic was 50% hack attacks and 50% spam.

After the show I took the tube to Leicester Square, ready to get back on again in the event of any tannoys about disturbances up top. As it was, it all seemed very quiet, although as I walked up Charing Cross Road a number of police wagons rolled down it towards Trafalgar Square. After hitting Murder One (damage: £25) and Playin' Games (damage: £15) - where I bumped into munquie - it was off to the Barley Mow. Numbers seemed very thin at first - had everyone defected to the Cittie of Yorke after all? - but filled out quickly from 7 or so. Quickly enough, indeed, that the kitchen became rather overwhelmed and my hamburger order ended up taking an hour and a quarter. I think this is the Barley Mow's weak point, in that it really isn't up to trying to feed 40 or more fans at once. This isn't a fatal problem, but as long as we're going there people should probably plan on eating first, or popping out for a bite. Has anyone done a guide to good eateries round Smithfield Market way yet? Anyway, I enjoyed the Tun, but the combination of a day spent walking, late supper and four pints of Bombadier took their toll and I staggered off before nine (cue chorus of 'Fake Fan!') to wend my weary way back to Huntingdon.

MC