MICROSOFT SECURITY DAY AT UMASS AMHERST
Department of Computer Science
Thursday, February 2, 2006
12:00 PM
The Computer Science Building, Rooms 150 & 151
Faculty Host: Brian Levine
I am pleased to announce that on Thursday Feb 2nd, the UMass campus will host three
excellent talks on security from Microsoft thanks to our MS Evangelist, Philip DesAutels.
Two talks will be held at the CS Dept, and a third will be held at the Isenberg School of
Management. The talks are open to all and the abstract, times, titles, and biographies of
the speakers are below.
Arrive hungry: MS will be providing pizza before the first talk, and there will be security
books, software, and games handed out as door prizes.
Refreshments at 11:45 AM in the Computer Science Building, Room 150.
Computer Science Talks
1)"Understanding Microsoft’s Security Response Process"
Barbara Chung
12:00 – 1:00pm Room 150/151 in the CS Building
Join us for a look at the Microsoft people and processes involved in responding to
security vulnerabilities with Microsoft’s Chief Security Advisor to Education.
Barbara Chung, CISSP, CISM, Chief Security Advisor for Education, Microsoft
Corporation., has been with Microsoft for the past seven years, working with
organizations across the span of US industries and public sector to mitigate the complex
challenges that they face in the current security environment. She has presented for the
Department of Homeland Security, at many state and other industry security events and
expert panels. For two years she maintained a community of security professionals
representing more than 600 organizations in diverse industries, ensuring their exposure to
developing technologies in the field of security, and assisting them in understanding and
accessing Microsoft’s security resources. She has directly supported Microsoft customers
in crisis, helping them develop appropriate response plans, coordinating resources to
assist in them in stabilizing, and improving their security status and response abilities.
2) "Meeting The Challenge Of Today’s Internet"
Diane Curtis
1:00pm – 1:30 Room 150/151
With the onslaught of SPAM making email almost unusable in some cases, Microsoft has
responded to customer needs with a comprehensive solution to the problem. Join us for a
tech talk on Microsoft’s SPAM solutions.
Diane Curtis is an Academic Developer Relations Manager at Microsoft. Diane graduated
from Ohio State with a B.S. in Mathematics and a B.S. in Computer Science. She started
at Microsoft as an intern on the .NET Framework. She worked as a Software Design
Engineer in Test on. NET Client and later became a Program Manager on Windows
Mobile and Safety Technologies. Diane recently joined the Academic Developer
Relations team, and focuses her efforts on fostering student developer communities.
Isenberg School of Management Talk
3) "Committing to Your Customers"
Diane Curtis and Philip DesAutels
2:00 – 3:00, Isenberg School, Room# 112
In 2002, Microsoft faced a serious problem; its products were not meeting customer
needs or expectations. The success of Microsoft’s products in the marketplace became a
double-edged sword. Ubiquity resulted in an onslaught of security attacks, leading to high
levels of customer dissatisfaction and loss or market share. Microsoft’s answer to this
challenge was the Trustworthy Computing Initiative, a bold effort to reshape the
company to customers needs. Join us for a review of this effort and how it has shaped and
changed every aspect of Microsoft. Door prizes include a PDA and books on customers
and knowledge management.
Diane Curtis is an Academic Developer Relations Manager at Microsoft. Diane graduated
from Ohio State with a B.S. in Mathematics and a B.S. in Computer Science. She started
at Microsoft as an intern on the .NET Framework. She worked as a Software Design
Engineer in Test on. NET Client and later became a Program Manager on Windows
Mobile and Safety Technologies. Diane recently joined the Academic Developer
Relations team, and focuses her efforts on fostering student developer communities.
Philip DesAutels is the Microsoft Academic Developer Evangelist for New England.
Prior to taking on this role, Philip was Microsoft’s product manager for XML & Web
Services. Philip left Microsoft between these two roles to study Preservation Carpentry at
the prestigious North Bennett Street School in Boston. Prior to coming to Microsoft,
Philip was the founder and CTO of Ereo, a content based image retrieval search engine
company. Philip founded the company after working for three years as Chief Scientist for
Excite@Home in the MatchLogic division. Philip was a project manager for the W3C at
their MIT office. There he led the security working group, led the development and
ratification of the Digital Signatures 1.0 standard and presented worldwide on a variety of
topics including metadata, child protection, security and digital signatures. Philip worked
for John Hancock Insurance as a member of the CIO’s Architecture team. He came to
that job from the Peace Corps where he served in Uzbekistan. In Uzbekistan, Philip
taught at several universities, established a microlending program, installed some of the
first email nodes in the country and consulted with various government agencies. Philip
was an engineer at IBM where he worked in the Enterprise Systems Division on largescale problems including complex upgrade order processing and inventory management.
Philip is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with MS and BS degrees in
Industrial and Management Engineering. Philip has authored papers on statistics and
Internet security.