Cwass

About Me

Colin
Currently Located in Ottawa,Canada
My employer expects me to remain focused on telecommunication systems security

I'm not completely sure what information might be worthwhile here, so I'll drop all of it and (should anyone bother to comment), I'll adjust.

What I do

I'm currently active in ISO/IECJTC1/SC27 IT security Standards. I understand most people believe anyone who does standards (especially Internationally) must be nuts, but it's actually a lot of fun. I'm actively involved in IT security research, and because of the international standards affiliation, I get to discuss these things with some of the best minds in the world. I should point out, however, that I specifically do security models and evaluation methodologies, I don't do encryption.

When I'm not looking for new and improved ways to show security is failing, I collect and read books. I have just over 1500 titles in my personal library covering research in a number of topics, general fiction and science fiction. My collecting focus is on late republican/early imperial Rome materials and middle-east materials of the same era. I have some very high-quality references, so I guess I'm going to have to start looking at those entries first.

I've been involved with FreeBSD, at a fairly light level, for about 8 years. I currently receive QA and Security, although it's rare I post or respond on either list. I've been a developer, working on various platforms including OS/2, Windows, Unix, and a few others, since the mid 1980's. I do very little code these days, although I did teach myself PHP a few months back to develop a prototype system for managing some of the types of information I work with on a regular basis.

I retired from the Canadian Air Force in 1998, after 10 years. I was a navigator on C-130 Hercules aircraft. As part of those duties, I was involved in humanitarian airlifts, re-supply for peace-keeping missions, etc, in all the least fun spots in central/eastern Africa and eastern Europe. Please don't ask for war stories or details of my service, as I don't feel that would be appropriate in this forum.