Steve Riley, product manager at Microsoft's security business unit in Redmond, told ZDNet Australia that one of his goals for the 10th annual TechEd conference, being staged in Brisbane from 10-13 August, was to convince an Australian audience that wireless security was of an adequate standard for business.
-One of my sessions that I will be delivering in Australia is about wireless security. There is a huge fear around wireless networks and many organisations have delayed implementation because there is a misunderstanding.
"The goal is to help people overcome their fear and get on with their wireless implementation because there is a great business need for wireless in a lot of stories."
However, Riley added that businesses should adopt a new way of thinking when implementing a security plan.
-Attackers are continuing to get more sophisticated," he said.
"We have to think of better ways to defend networks, we can't rely more and more on a few firewalls and say 'hey, we're done'.
"There needs to be a new way of thinking about coding -- building security into the application and into the system and into the people that are using it, which can be a challenge," Riley added.
Riley also believes there needs to be a new way of thinking when implementing Microsoft technology -- especially with regard to Windows Server 2003, in which all security is locked down and options turned off.
-For a long time it has been very difficult to configure our products to be secure because we did not have default secure connections," he said.
"The products could be made secure but it was a bit of work.
"Essentially everything [in Windows Server 2003] is locked down or not even turned on, which is a change of pace for customers, as they have to figure out what to turn on rather than turn off."
Microsoft's annual four-day TechEd conference commenced on Sunday at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre in Queensland, with developers and IT professionals from around the world looking to expand their knowledge of Microsoft technologies.
TechEd 2003 is Australia's largest technical conference for Microsoft technology, with Peter Moore, Microsoft's chief technology officer for Australia, Asia and greater China claiming over 1600 participants are attending, including 410 students who were allowed to attend for free on Sunday only.
This years' conference includes more than 100 hands-on sessions, labs to test Microsoft technology and ask-the-expert sessions.
The event is being broken up into two technical areas, one for IT professionals with a focus on system administration issues and the second for developers focusing on software development, engineering, and architecture.
Microsoft lecturing on security... you gotta be kidding me. Wireless is hopelessly insecure. Look to new standards, not Microsoft hype to solve the problem.