Your Data Centre of the Future

Jamie Sharp 2007

Relax for a moment and let your mind wander through your corporate network. Its myriad of authentication schemes, its haphazard collection of client computers in various states of (non)conformance, its proliferation of access methods, its data centres with too many ways in and out. Do you feel like you want to rip it out and start again? Unfortunately you can’t, but you can build something that's simpler, more secure, well managed, and less expensive. The question then, is how to build this data centre? This session will look at the famous 'De-militarised zone' (DMZ) security concept and turn it upside down. Many people say we don't need it, whilst many others say we do. Just how stupid are firewalls? Whose fault is it that this stuff is so complicated? Are ports relevant anymore? How can I traverse firewalls for applications? We will discuss these questions and also investigate new security concepts and architectures to realise the vision of security and business agility.

About Jamie Sharp

Jamie Sharp is a Security Architect with Microsoft. He has over 10 years of IT Security experience and holds a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification. Jamie advises clients on best practice strategies for mitigating complex security issues. His technical security competencies include network and host security, communication protocols, network design, information security policy and process, threat and risk assessments, enterprise architecture and regulatory compliance. His customers include state and federal government departments, financial institutions, defence, manufacturing and traditional enterprise IT customers. He has conducted security assessments and risk analyses, deployed technologies for prevention and detection of security vulnerabilities and designed highly-available enterprise architectures.