Predictive Cyber Security
Gidi Cohen, Skybox Security, San Jose, CA
10/14/2010
Using risk modeling and attack simulation to reduce network security exposures and avoid cyber attacks, IT professionals are proving that it is possible to secure networks from cyber attacks even in the most demanding real-world environments. The key is to enhance proactive security capabilities to plan for and take steps to prevent attacks before they happen. Risk modeling and attack simulation technologies allow IT professionals to visualize and simulate the interaction of a complex set of factors such as network topology device settings, potential threats, access policies, attacker techniques, known vulnerabilities, and more. This lecture will show you how to use proactive security technologies in real-world scenarios to find and eliminate network security risks. We will demonstrate a best-practices approach based on lessons learned in using near real-time network modeling, vulnerability management and attack simulation to find, predict, and prevent attacks against global networks. In addition, we will discuss how to quantify and communicate security risks for executive decision-making, as well as translate security risk management objectives into effective IT processes for risk assessments, change control, compliance management, and more.
Challenges In Virtualized Datacenter Management
Jennifer Anderson and Ravi Soundararajan, VMware, Palo Alto, CA
10/21/2010
Virtualization has become the de facto policy for server deployment in modern Fortune-500 companies. When an end-user requests a new server, the first question that is asked is no longer "why virtualize" but "why NOT virtualize." In reducing server sprawl, virtualization has also become part of the IT revolution toward Green Computing. In this talk, we will give a brief retrospective on x86-based virtualization, describe its evolution as a dominant datacenter and cloud technology, and also describe some of the challenges we face in virtualized datacenter management. We will describe how virtualization creates new management workflows that ease large-scale administration, but require re-thinking the design of datacenters for best performance.
Natural Language For Games
Jason Shankel, The Stupid Fun Club
10/28/2010
Advances in computer technology have improved the performance of decades old AI methodologies for generating and interpreting natural language and how these advances will be used in the future development of content rich computer-based entertainment. Pizza after talk in Darwin 28
Science Fiction—Portal To The Future
Dave Einstein, San Francisco Chronicle Technology Columnist
11/04/2010
If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.. When writer and theologian William Arthur Ward coined that phrase, he was talking about matters of the soul. Yet, it also turns out to be true for science. Since the mid-nineteenth century, when Jules Verne became the father of science fiction, he and many other writers have successfully predicted a wide range of inventions and discoveries that shape our world today. Things like electricity, the automobile, airplanes, space travel—and more recently, computers and the Internet—all sprang from the minds of science fiction writers years before science made them realities. Today, science fiction continues to probe the future, with stories of immersive virtual reality, FTL and time travel, artificial intelligence and biogenetics. Well-respected writers who practice hard science predict that in the not-too distant future, mankind will render the Earth unlivable. Are today’s best science fiction writers also reliable futurists? And should we be paying attention to them? There’s no time like the present to decide.
Emerging Technologies In Internet Video Broadcasting
William Batt-Freitas, CBS Interactive, San Francisco, CA
11/18/2010
Thanks to increasing Internet speeds and decreasing hardware costs, users are accessing video in more places and on more devices. Companies that produce and serve this content must ensure that their video streams are accessible for the widest possible audience. Come and see how a leading Internet company is setting the bar for content delivery. Pizza after talk in Darwin 28