Assoc. Anti Virus Asia Researchers 2003 conference

AVAR and Symantec announce the #1 Asia Pacific Conference on Malicious Code

The Association of anti Virus Asia Researchers 2003 conference to be held in Sydney, 6-7 November

Sydney, Australia - November 3, 2003 - With the rapid increase of Internet threats such as worms, viruses and trojans, Symantec, the world leader in Internet security today announced the AVAR Conference 2003 (Association of anti Virus Asia Researchers), the leading e-security forum designed to bring together technology experts focused in the areas of antivirus and malicious code.

The conference, sponsored by Symantec will be held on 6-7 November 2003 at the Westin Hotel, Sydney, Australia. The theme for this year's conference is 'Malicious Code', and will address emerging malicious code threats (viruses, worms and trojans), and the technologies designed to deal with these threats today and in the future.

Alfred Huger, Senior Director of Engineering, Symantec Security Response commented: "Internet threats are increasingly becoming more complex in nature - they are now using multiple methods of propagation and attack.

"Symantec's recent Internet Security Threat Report has shown that during the first six months of 2003, there was a 400 per cent increase in malicious code using new technologies such as Instant Messaging and Peer to Peer networking as spreading mechanisms. Looking into the future, malicious code may start to target other systems including Linux."

Seiji Murakami, President, AVAR commented: "The AVAR conference enables experts in the antivirus community to come together to discuss these new risks and the evolving technologies to combat malicious code at all layers within an organisation's network."

The keynote speech will be presented by Mr Huger and will include a video address by industry expert Richard Clarke, former Special Advisor to the President of the USA for cyber security. Speakers include Vesselin Bontchev (Frisk Software International), Paul Ducklin (Sophos Anti-Virus), Dimitry Gryaznov (Network Associates), Graham Ingram (AusCert), Peter Coroneus (Internet Industry Association), and Robert Vibert (AVIEN).

They will address topics related to emerging malicious code threats including new threats and vulnerabilities of wireless devices, why email virus detection and blocking is not enough by itself to adequately manage incidents, and new threat mitigation strategies for malicious code.

Sponsors of the conference include Symantec (Platinum), Computer Associates, Network Associates, Trend Micro (Gold), Sophos Anti-Virus (Silver)and Sensory Networks (Silver). AusCERT and MessageLabs are supporters of the AVAR conference.

Please visit http://www.aavar.org for the AVAR Conference 2003 timetable, list of speakers and topics.

The AVAR Conference is an annual event organised by the Association of anti Virus Asia Researchers (AVAR) since 1998. Last year's AVAR 2002 Conference in Seoul attracted 180 technology experts, including information security managers, network and system administrators, government officials, antivirus vendors and practitioners and AVAR members.

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