Last week my wifes puter went BSOD. I ended up doing the Ghost restore back to day one. As I began to put her puter back together with her favorite programs, I hoped she had a current backup of her emails and Firefox favs put away somewhere.

She did! I was a happy toad! But for some reason, the backups were not compatible with the restore options with Firefox and Thunderbird.

So she lost all her emails for the last 2 months. The Firefox favs and settings are not a worry so much, but those emails she lost, sad.

So I come to you today thru the zeros and ones of the Internet to tell you,,,,,

Back up you data and make sure the restore options will work. Now I use Mozy and Ive had to do a restore with it in the past and it works great. So dont just be satisfied that you have backups, make sure the restore will work! Try it out. Do a backup and then right away, restore the data and check it.

Heres the Mozy link I promote on SpywareBiz.com, give it a try.

Gartner IT Security Summit - June 1-3, 2008 - Washington, DC.

Alright - call this an omnibus posting.

I had planned to do a better job of intra-day postings, but the schedule here is hectic and as anyone who knows me can attest, I really do work to get maximum value out of any conference that I go to.

Highlights here - much more detail available if anyone comments/emails me to ask.

Day 1
Opening Keynote - The next 10 years in IT Security - Rated: Good.
Keynote - Google’s Security - Rated: Excellent.
Keynote - SciFi Authors’ Future View of IT Security - Rated: Excellent.

“F” Track - Gartner Analysts/Researchers speak on the topic of “The CISO” - Rated: Mediocre to Good.
Exhibition Floor - Rated: Good.
Food - Rated: Hotel Std. Bring Pepto
Product Highlight - Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess 3500 Nonstop Laptop Guardian It’s a way to lojack your laptops - a device that stores your crypto keys, 2nd factor auth token, acts as your 3G WWAN, GPS enabled, has an on-board Linux which acts as the “IT department’ controlled/controllable machine. Main feature - remote kill the laptop you lost.

Day 2
Keynote - Security Architecture for the Next 10 years - Rated: Excellent
“F” Track - Gartner Analysts/Researchers speak on the topic of “The CISO” - Rated: Good to Better
Exhibition Floor - Rated: I don’t want to try to get that much shwag through airport security. SRSLY.
Food - Rated: I cannot wait for my kitchen. I cannot eat this much commercial grade food and stay healthy/alive. Amazing how even the fresh fruit is labelled “Hotel Froot”. It’s like an episode of the Simpsons.

Overall Review: I’ll probably come back - the issue of credibility in ensuring that I can quote someone that the business / IT folks respect rather than just my own opinion is a good thing, however, as a prominent (ha - take that Mike) security blogger, I’m a 4-5 on the CISO-CMM — and I’m surrounded by a whole lot of zeros and ones. Gartner is a good host, they take feedback seriously and are very interested in delivering some real value to people like me.

What needs to be fixed:

1. You may have noted that I’m not really chuffed by the food, and you’d be damn right. What is it with the “Conference Hotel/Venue” market that gives them such perfect 2 dimensional homogeneity of image and food? Fix the food.
2. Reorganize the environment such that I spend less time walking back and forth down this hallway.

3. Wifi… oh terrifying wifi. If there was a Wall of Sheep here, you couldn’t read it - it’d be scrolling too fast. Don’t you idiots have a freakin’ VPN?
4. BoF Sessions would be good — there’s not a whole lot of time in the schedule just to stir around and talk to people. There should be a number of areas that allow for free form communication amongst attendees. Have Gartner Analysts in and around those areas to spur conversations.
5. And lastly - Washington? WTF? Flying in to the DC area is practically a strip search. Conferencing is getting harder as the airline industry squeezes - and if I’ve got to fly, I want as little friction as possible.

It’s been a blast, but I need to pay attention and watch the countdown to my airport transfer at 1600.

Tags: Gartner, Gartner IT Security Summit, Alcatel-Lucent, OmniAccess 3500, Security Conferences