syslog

The Sys Admin security track provides essential information to help you stay current with the latest threats and implement powerful tools and techniques to keep your systems secure. In this track, Hal Pomeranz will teach two half-day courses -- "How They Do It: Unix Hacking 101" and "Simple Unix Tricks: Spotting Break-ins". In the first course, Hal will cover stack smashing, session hijacking, and other nefarious tricks for breaking into Unix systems. He will also look at the current state of the art in the rootkits that attackers use to escape detection and maintain access after a successful break-in. In the second course, Hal will present a simple set of checks that systems administrators can perform to monitor the status of their Unix systems.

In other featured security courses, Peter Galvin will review some useful security features in the latest release of the Solaris operating system, and Kristy Westphal will examine all aspects of honeypots, including building, monitoring, and maintaining them. Jay Beale, primary author of Bastille, a system-hardening tool, will provide an overview of how to implement Bastille to improve the security of your enterprise. Richard Mackey and Brad Johnson will discuss the major issues of securing hand-held devices, covering general vulnerabilities as well as specific security measures you should consider.

The Sys Admin scripting track offers basic-to-advanced levels of scripting training to help you solve hundreds of problems. The courses describe the underlying technology features as well as limitations to help you avoid common scripting mistakes, understand the best practices, and implement solutions quickly. As part of this track, Randal Schwartz will teach two all-day tutorials -- "Learning Perl" and "Intermediate Perl". In the first course, Randal will show how to use Perl to accomplish many common tasks and lay the groundwork for more advanced study. In the second course, he will cover advanced data structures in Perl and show you how to keep your Perl programs running smoothly. Other courses will provide training in MySQL and Python.

The SD Best Practices conference, now in its 17th year, provides classes and tutorials in several programming tracks, including: Design and Architecture, Requirements and Analysis, Build and Deploy, and Testing and Quality. It is the conference's mission to provide reliable, trustworthy, and practical training that will help boost efficiency, streamline infrastructure, enhance quality, and achieve successful project outcomes. I'm very excited about Sys Admin's participation in this conference and invite you to attend. You can see all the details and register online at: http://www.sdexpo.com.

Sincerely yours,

Amber Ankerholz
Editor in Chief