New Cryptography: Algorithms, APIs and Architecture

The final session of TechEd 2006 (that is, the last session slot - there were multiple to choose from) was held by Rafal Lukawiecki.

This session was marked as a level 300 session but compared to most other level 300 sessions, this was more in the ballpark of level 4-500 - which was a pleasant surprise! In generel I've been a bit disappointed by the level of the TechEd. There's a lot of great sessions but a lot of them leave a lot to be desired in regards of technicality, there's simply too much marketing and sales material. But then again, this conference is primarily about sparking creativity and creating new ideas, and it certainly has fulfilled that job to the fullest.

Rafal started out by describing our current cryptosystems, their powers and weaknesses. Then he went into the field of new cryptosystems, the past, present and future. Then he told about some of the new cryptographic services that are present in Vista (as COM services). Primarily it's about alleviating our current job of choosing the appropriate algorithms for the specific job, by simply using a cryptosystemprovider that will return an algorithm to us, which will then handle the actual en/decryption.

It was nice to finally hear a talk on a higher level and on a topic that I'm very much interested in.