Are you going to Edge 2013 in Las Vegas? One of the key topic areas is Information Security. Here is an example 4-minute video [Hedging your bets: Security and Privacy]:
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Twenty years ago, I flew to Atlanta for the semi-annual SHARE conference. I was a lead architect for DFSMS, the storage management software for mainframe servers. When I got to the hotel, I realized that I had forgotten to pack my saline solution for my contact lenses. I went to the hotel gift shop, and picked the first one I found. I took my contacts in the solution and went to bed.
The next morning, I put on my contacts, got dressed, and participated in meetings. One of my colleagues noticed my eyes were quite red, and suggested I switch from contact lenses to glasses. I went back to my hotel room, saw to my horror that what I thought was saline solution was actually hydrogen peroxide intended for hard lenses. When I removed the lenses, all I could see was white light.
I managed to find my way to the elevator, and feel for the button with the star that indicated the lobby on the ground floor. I asked a hotel staffer to call me an ambulance, but instead, they put me in a cab, and sent me to Emory Hospital. On arrival, all I could do was hand over my wallet to my cabbie, and let him take out what he felt was fair, since I could not see him, the meter, or his license number.
After bumping my knees into dozens of cars in the parking lot, I finally made it to the ER, only to have receptionist give me a form to fill out and a pen. At this point, I lost it. I gave her my wallet and said that any information she may need should be in there.
Thankfully, a doctor noticed this exchange, and took care of me right away. I had chemically burned off both corneas. He injected some green fluid into both eyeballs, and sent me off in a cab to the Pharmacy. At least I had both eyes were bandaged in gauze, so people were kind enough to take me to get to the counter to get my pain killers, Percocet.
The pharmacist provided me the pills, and warned me NOT to operate any heavy machinery under the influece of this medication. Seriously? I can't see, both eyes covered, and he tells me that?
I got back to the hotel, got ready for bed, took the pills and brushed my teeth. I woke up the next morning on the bathroom floor, still clutching the toothbrush, and vertical and horizontal lines across my right cheek which were made by the one-inch tiles of the bathroom floor. These pills really knocked me out.
That day, I had to present a full hour in front of hundreds of people. I had a colleague flip my transparencies for me, while I spoke to each one, my eyes still covered in gauze. That evening, I was one of the experts on the panel for a "Birds of a Feather", or BOF session, answering a variety of questions. People could see that I was blind, but I could still hear the questions, and I could still answer them as well.
If you are going to Edge 2013 in Las Vegas, please consider attending my BOF session on Security for PureSystems, System x and Storage products, scheduled for Thursday afternoon, June 13. I will be moderating a distinguished panel of experts to answer your questions! I have listed them here alphabetically:
- Jack Arnold, US Federal. Jack has worked decades in the storage industry, and will provide insight into security issues related to the government.
- Tom Benjamin, Development Manager for Key Lifecycle Management and Java Cryptography. Tom will bring his expertise in both TKLM and ISKLM for managing encryption keys, and how to communicate these between security and storage administrators.
- Paul Bradshaw, Chief Storage Architect for Clouds. A research scientist from IBM's Almaden Research Lab, Paul will provide insight in how to deal with security issues related to private, hybrid and public cloud deployments.
- Ajay Dholakia, Solution Center of Excellent. Ajay will cover server-side considerations for security deployments, including System x and PureSystems.
- Jim Fisher, Advanced Technical Skills. Jim brings expertise related to deploying data-at-rest encryption.
Not sure what kind of questions to ask? Here is a series of Questions and Answers we had at a Storage event in 2011 that might give you a good idea: [2011 Storage Free-for-All].