LISA, sponsored by USENIX, The Advanced Computing Systems Association, and SAGE, The System Administrators Guild, is a conference created for system administrators by system administrators.

Hein and McClain joined other noted authors, practitioners, and experts in the field of system administration in providing a forum for practicing system administrators, researchers, software developers, and vendors to explore current problems, learn new solutions, and contemplate future research challenges and solutions.

"The folks behind LISA offer a great opportunity for sysadmins to come together," noted Ruth Miller, an independent system administration consultant and sole proprietor of Global Edge Systems. "The presenters provided insight based on practical, hands-on experience, which I find really valuable."

The week-long conference offered 39 tutorials as well as technical presentations and opportunities to evaluate new approaches, find people with similar interests or administrative problems, pose technical questions, and explore the latest commercial innovations.

Hein and McClain, with renowned University of Colorado Professor Emeritus Evi Nemeth, taught two sessions of "Topics in Unix and Linux Administration." They covered such important topics as logical volume management for Linux, security packet filtering, BIND9, network server performance tuning, log server management, Sendmail, security tools, site localization and management, and security incident recovery. In addition, they provided real-world examples with case studies on performance crisis and security crisis, and they also addressed policy and politics.

"LISA is always a terrific conference. In 1992 when I served as Program Chair of LISA, we migrated to the current format of having a full week of world-class technical presentations." said Hein, president and CEO of Applied Trust. "It's great to see how LISA has grown to be the premier system administration conference. No other conference provides such direct access to system administration experts."

About Applied Trust Engineering

Applied Trust Engineering provides IT security and infrastructure solution services. Founded by security infrastructure experts Trent R. Hein and Ned McClain, Applied Trust is based in Boulder, Colo., and focuses on infrastructure security, performance, and availability in a business context. For more information, visit Applied Trust Engineering online at www.atrust.com.