Microsoft's New Director of Security Talks about the Hackers on the Redmond Campus

Andrew Cushman, the new director of the Microsoft Security Research Center, has taken the role of Sr. Director Security Response and Community after being at the lead of the company's Security Outreach Initiative in the past couple of years.

Cushman is one of the Microsoft veterans, being with the company for over 16 years. Prior to his current position as the head of the MSRC, Cushman joined the company's efforts to engage the security research community. In this context, Cushman and his team had to manage community outreach programs, the Black Hat Security Researcher Appreciation receptions, gather sponsorships for the hacking conferences and for Microsoft's own BlueHat. Yesterday, Cushman focused on this spring's hacking event over at the Redmond Company, revealing an insight on BlueHat V5.

"Wednesday May 9th we kicked off the fifth BlueHat security conference with talks presented to executives and senior engineering leaders from across the company. BlueHat v5 continues on Thursday with general sessions for the engineering teams. We have a full day of content planned of interest to engineers on our newest products XBox, Mobile, Security Products, Live and Web Apps," Cushman stated, pointing users to the Microsoft BlueHat Security Briefings: Spring 2007 Sessions and Interviews resources available online over at TechNet, and the additional content on Channel9.

BlueHat is designed to bridge the external security community with Microsoft's engineers and business leaders. The Microsoft hacking conferences aim to change the general perception of the Redmond Company's involvement in the security field and responsibility for customer protection.

But the conference will also "expose senior product leaders and front line engineers to the threats and attack tools and methodologies used in the real world. Take the security threat from the theoretical/intellectual level of, "I understand what a buffer overflow is", to "OMG that's what it's like." BlueHat connects with employees at a visceral in order and really brings the message home," Cushman said.