In Madrid for the ISSE 2008 conference, I found myself losing sleep over the state of our global economy. What a mess! With two free hours, I decided to visit the art museums. A quick cab ride brought me to the Reina Sofia Museum, which houses Guernica. No words or JPEG can do justice to Picasso’s masterpiece. Although the work was inspired by the brutality of war, to me today it spoke to the tragedy and beauty of life.

Our current financial crisis will bring years of pain on a small and large scale. We must do what we can to avoid such tragedies but they will inevitably happen. Still, a small flower grows at the center of the painting. New life and creativity will spring from this tragedy as it always does.

Please treat each other with kindness and patience for the next few months. Be an island of calm. Spread hope not fear. Nothing physical has changed in recent weeks, only a psychological change. Let’s keep it that way and support each other. We will come out of this crisis stronger and wiser than before.

What have you been up to this summer? Relaxing at the beach? Hosting a BBQ for friends?

I have been traveling around the globe, talking to people about Network Access Control and network security in general. My next few posts will be a bit of a travelogue, a set of notes and observations and photos from my travels. Enjoy!

Last week, I spoke about the TNC standards at Interop Tokyo. Then I went back to the TCG booth and talked with Japanese government and enterprise customers, researchers, manufacturers, and reporters about TCG technology. There’s an amazing amount of support for TCG technologies in Japan! On the flight home, I reflected on how far we’ve come in the last few years and what lessons we can draw from this growing wave of support for TCG standards.

A few years ago, TCG technologies like TPM and TNC were only concepts being discussed by a few people. How could we have trustworthy devices and networks? Now these technologies are globally accepted and widely used. Millions of people have a TPM in their laptop and a TNC client in their operating system. Organizations such as the U.S. Department of Defense require a TPM in every PC. How did this come about? Open standards unleashed the awesome power of human innovation and communities.

Open standards are not enough. There are many thousands of standards, most of which are unsuccessful. Successful standards solve a specific set of problems but allow extensions to encourage innovation and meet special needs. That’s what the TPM and TNC standards have done. And that’s why these standards have flourished. Vendors and customers see value in implementing the basic standards and opportunity in the many ways they can extend these standards. Eventually, communities of interest grow up. The TCG just announced the Japan Regional Forum, a place for Japanese discussion and promotion of TCG standards. This demonstrates the power of open standards.

Think about TCP/IP or WiFi. Having a single set of common standards has enabled a huge amount of innovation with products like the iPhone or iKan. That’s what TPM and TNC do: create an open platform for innovation and adaptation. Once that platform is established, then it’s just a matter of getting everyone on board and letting the innovation begin. The value of a standard is proportional to the square of the number of implementers. That exponential power is really starting to take off for TPM and TNC and other TCG technologies!

Tawnee Kendall and I sat down and recorded this video on the future of network security. Check it out!