Customer Power and AV Wannabes · Chapter 1 5 I decided to take my family to Florida, as the VB conference was being held near the amusement parks, and we piled into the car and drove from our home near Ottawa, in Ontario, to Orlando. On the way, I stopped in to see Ken Bechtel, a fellow traveler on the antivirus road. I mentioned the conversations I had been having with some of the security folks at Nortel Networks, mainly John Morris and Peter Sherwood, and with some of my fellow ISSA members.These conversations centered on the need to exchange information on the virus threat and how to best leverage investments in anti-virus defenses. Ken had also had some ideas along the same lines and we agreed to float the topic at the VB conference. Cocktails For Two -- and More During the opening cocktail hour, Ken and I started discussing the need for better sources of up-to-date information and resources for dealing with malware threats, as well as the need to stop re-inventing the wheel and to learn from the efforts of other anti-virus specialists. Soon, a small group of anti-virus specialists from companies such as Nortel, Boeing, and Prudential were gathered and plotting the start of a forum where they could talk openly about their issues concerning AV companies and products and share ideas. During my presentation on anti-virus solution deployment in enterprise environments, I offered to coordinate the formation of a group of like-minded people to discuss these topics. Inside AVIEN, we fondly refer to this as our "conception." During the remainder of the conference, people pressed their business cards into my hands and I diligently filed them in my pockets. After the Hangover A few weeks later, after arriving back home, I contacted these people to confirm that they were really interested in collaborating like this.The response was overwhelmingly in favor of going forward with the plan, and as a result, the world witnessed the formation of a closed, private network. Early on, members agreed that there would be some restrictions on who could belong to AVIEN, so as to ensure that topics discussed were those most important to the majority of members. One Day at a Time Since the beginning, members of AVIEN have always been people who look after medium- to large-sized organizations, with at least 1,500 PCs under their care.They have always been employed only by organizations that do not sell anti-virus software, and they have always agreed to abide by a strict code of conduct with regard to confidentiality and mutual respect. The main activities of AVIEN occurred on several e-mailing lists where discussions focused on deployment of AV software, new viruses that were spotted, and lots of "get-to-know-each- other" conversations. Initially hosted on my e-mail server, it soon became necessary to move the www.syngress.com