How do you manage your privileged passwords? Come to the meeting, share horror stories and discuss best practices using the Secret Server solution by Thycotic: “The IT industry typically focuses on network security, endpoint security, firewalls, vulnerability testing, and intrusion detection. Unfortunately, passwords are often overlooked. Policies are created for end user passwords to ensure complexity and regular changes, but what about privileged passwords? Privileged (admin/root) accounts are privileged system level accounts that do not correspond to an end user. Privileged accounts can do practically anything on the network with often with little or no accountability. Examples of privileged accounts include Windows local administrator accounts, UNIX root accounts, firewall admin accounts, application/service accounts, and router local accounts – and they all have passwords. What is the best way to manage these privileged passwords?”

Windows Azure is an open cloud platform that enables developers to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. Our guest speaker, Zhiming Xue, Microsoft architect evangelist, will provide an update on the new release of Microsoft Windows Azure, including its support for Node.js, java and PHP.

Benjamin Campbell is the Technology Evangelist at Thycotic Software, headquartered in Washington, DC. Thycotic produces enterprise password management tools including Secret Server, an encrypted web-based password vault for storing privileged passwords. Benjamin’s previous roles include Lead Systems Engineer, Deployment Team Leader and Windows Subject Matter Expert in varied fields including healthcare, government and high technology.

Zhiming Xue “Z"--Dr. Zhiming Xue “Z" is a senior Microsoft Architect Evangelist, based in the Washington DC area. He focuses on the Windows Azure platform while continuing to evangelize Microsoft technologies such as Windows Phone, SharePoint, Silverlight, ASP.NET and the web platform. Prior to his current role, he played lead developer and architect roles at Microsoft Services to support enterprise customers in both private sector and public sector. His blog is blogs.msdn.com/zxue.