Jaw jaw at RSA Europe and AMTSO

If you revolve in security circles then you may well know that this week is "RSA week". The European version of the well-known stateside security conference is taking place over the next few days at the ExCeL Conference Centre centre in London's rejuvenated docklands.

(By the way, am I the only one to get annoyed by the overuse of camel-case in the ExCeL Centre's name? It's like a convention of dromedaries..)

If you're going to the conference, please feel free to drop in on a roundtable discussion I am participating in tomorrow morning at 10.15am. I, and luminous peers such as David Perry from Trend Micro, Larry Bridwell from AVG and Andreas Marx of independent testing labs AV-Test, will be discussing "The Need To Adopt Standards-Based Anti-Malware Testing Methodologies".

And if you're in the market for encryption (and lets face it, with the barrage of stories of data leakage foul-ups, you probably should be) you could do a lot worse than have a chat with those lovely chaps from Utimaco on stand 46.

RSA Europe week serendipitously coincides with the next meeting of AMTSO (the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organisation), a cross-industry group designed to improve the quality of anti-virus tests.

A motley crew of anti-virus researchers and other interested parties from companies such as Trend Micro, AV-Test, ICSA Labs, Eset, McAfee, Norman, Symantec, Virus Bulletin, AVG, MessageLabs (aren't they now Symantec? Sounds like someone is after extra drinks..), F-Secure, Panda, Bit 9, Alwil, Kaspersky, Microsoft, and others I've probably forgotten.. are descending on Oxford, as Sophos HQ will be the venue on Thursday and Friday this week.

This horde is planning to have a night out amid the dreaming spires of Oxford on Thursday night. I imagine this will be an evening of high art, classical music and witty repartee. I'll report back on who ends up spending the night in jail.