Our Chief Consultant, Allan Dyer, spoke on behalf of the Information Security Specialist Group of the Hong Kong Computer Society at the Integrated Security Conference & Expo, on the 21st April. His topic was Anti-Spam: Today and the Future. Dyer advocated using Legal, Social and Technical controls in combination to combat spam. He also identified the first spam as being sent in 782 B.C., by King You of the Zhou dynasty. The Kings' misuse of the messaging system led to his death, and the end of the Zhou dynasty. Dyer gave his criteria for acceptable messaging, and argued that political parties and charities should not be given an exemption to the rules: freedom of speech does not equal freedom from responsibility. There is also a responsibility for everyone, including home users, to keep their machines free of the unauthorised backdoors and open relays that spammers often utilise.
Spam was a hot topic for the conference, with a number of the other speakers also focussing on it, including the Opening Keynote speaker, Howard Dickson, the Government Chief Information Officer.