Timing is everything

Gartner is scoring big-time with its Gartner IT Security Summit 2005 in Washington, D.C. this week, thanks to the person who is moderating a panel.

A forum on Monday is titled the CyberCzar Panel and it features some IT security luminaries including Howard Schmidt, the former White House cybersecurity advisor and chief security strategist of the U.S. CERT, and Amit Yoran, the former director for the Homeland Security Department's National Cyber Security Division.

But the moderator of that panel? None other than Bob Woodward, the Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize winner. There were one or two (thousand) stories this week about Woodward's infamous Watergate insider Deep Throat.

Unfortunately I won't be there, although as a Watergate buff, I would love to. But I'm sure we'll report back on how the session goes.

Along these lines, Woodward and Birnstein's Watergate papers -- and soon, their Deep Throat papers -- are housed at the University of Texas. They have an interesting Web site that is worth a visit if you too are a Watergate buff.