[SoCoSA/discuss] Meeting Next Wednesday: Patch Management

[Eric Eisenhart]

On Wed, Jul 05, 2006 at 12:28:04PM -0700, Jim Oser wrote:
> I google Darren Nicholson and found out he is/was a baseball player  
> and he is active in sports in Danville.

I believe the company is in Danville, so that could be the same person.  In
fact, after some googling I find some sporting related things with his email
address at autonomic attached to them, so I'm sure it is.  I usually ask for
a talk description and a bio; in this instance I just got a talk
description.

> Could you give a little bit more information about Darren Nicholson  
> and/or Autonomic Software?
> 
> Why was this speaker/company chosen to speak?
> 
> Has someone in the group used their product?
> 
> Has someone in the group heard the speaker before?
> 
> Will the speaker be talking about the patch management tools that his  
> company makes or will he be talking about US Cert and the Secret  
> Service?

All fair questions.

Susan (our Treasurer/Secretary) talked to somebody at the company at a
conference (CATS, I believe) that she was attending and the product sounded
interesting to her and like it might be of interest to others in our group. 
I don't know if Darren is the person she had talked to, or if it was another
person who works for the company.

As I understand it, their patch management product essentially consists of a
service running on a Windows server that talks to "agents" on all your
systems.  They specifically mention Windows, Linux, Solaris and MacOSX, but
it's my understanding that it can be made to handle pushing out patches to
any platform as long as the process can be broken down to copying a file to
the system and running a command-line.  I don't know which way
communications are initiated or anything like that.

My best guess is that he's got a "canned talk" (one given before to other
audiences) that talks about security in general and leads into why keeping
systems patched is an awfully good idea and gets into details about their
product.  We didn't get the more detailed description until recently, though
I think we originally talked about getting them onto the schedule back in
March or April...

And, of course, part of why they were chosen is that we always have trouble
finding speakers and at the time we lined up the speaker nobody in the group
was ready to put something together.  Next month's talk will be from
somebody in our group (Chris, the VP) talking about something he's been
dealing with at work lately and found interesting (WAFS; Wide-Area File
Services).  I'm thinking that sometime this fall (september, october or
november) I'll do a talk either on kickstart (redhat auto-installation) or
making your own RPMs; both things I deal with at work and that could be
useful in a Linux-server environment.  If anybody else would be interested
in giving the group a presentation, let me know (best method: email
steering at socosa.org); I'd love to have a mix where half (or more) of our
talks are from members and the only vendors we bring in are the ones with
outstandingly interesting and informative presentations.  Presenting to
SoCoSA (or NBLUG) is good practice for an important career skill, too; won't
miss out on a promotion if you get flustered in front of our little group
and could help you do a better job in front of the VPs next quarter when
you have to explain the benefits of replacing all your infrastructure and
why its worth them spending all that money.  ;)

> I think I am missing some pieces of the puzzle.

I hope that filled in a few of the pieces...

> Jim
> 
> 
> On Jun 28, 2006, at 9:07 PM, Eric Eisenhart wrote:
> 
> >More Info, Map, etc: http://socosa.org/meeting/2006/07
> >
> >Location: O'Reilly's offices in Sebastopol
> >Start for food: Wednesday, July 5th, 6pm.
> >Start for talk: Wednesday, July 5th, 7pm.
> >
> >Topic:  Today's Technology vs. Dynamic Threats (Patch Management)
> >
> >Speaker: Darren Nicholson, Autonomic Software
> >
> >The topic will be Today's Technology vs. Dynamic Threats. The  
> >Threatscape
> >has expanded to new heights. What was once thought to be a silver  
> >bullet
> >approach, with encryption and firewalls, today's cyber criminals have
> >surpassed by volumes. Learn about the information that US CERT and The
> >Secret Service do not publicly talk about when it comes to cyber  
> >crime.
> >-- 
> >Eric Eisenhart <freiheit at SoCoSA.org>
> >SoCoSA Founder and President
> >IRC: freiheit on irc.socosa.org
> >AIM: falschfreiheit
> >
> >_______________________________________________
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> >Your address: oserj at oserconsulting.com
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> 
> 
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-- 
Eric Eisenhart <freiheit at SoCoSA.org>
SoCoSA Founder and President
IRC: freiheit on irc.socosa.org
AIM: falschfreiheit