Google I/O Developer Conference: Where's The Security Love?

At the Google I/O developer conference this week, Google Inc. will host more than 80 technical sessions on all of the Google apps and platforms we've come to know -- Android, Chrome, App Engine, Web Toolkit, AJAX and others. When reviewing the Google I/O Schedule this morning, I was disappointed by what could not be easily found.The conference will run this week, May 28 to 29, in San Francisco, and Google is expecting more than 2,000 attendees.

Unfortunately, a long perusal of the schedule shows plenty of tracks with Search, Scale, and Performance in the title -- but only one track with Security. What about Privacy? Well, there's no tracks highlighting data privacy, either.

There is a session that covers federated identity management, Practical Standards-based Security and Identity in the Enterprise. And it looks promising, but federated authentication and authorization is more about making sure applications and people can interact securely, not that an application, itself, is inherently secure.

So if you're looking for sessions on how to build and manage your applications security, there's not much.

There is this track that will detail how to avoid cross-site request forgery attacks Fun Hacks and Cool JavaScript: The Advanced Techniques Behind the Google AJAX API Playground. But XSRF vulnerabilities are but just one type of problem developers need to be aware.

Looks like a great conference for developers. Though, it is disheartening that there's not a greater focus on application security.

I'm sure that will change for future I/O Developer Conferences.

In the years ahead we'll see such sessions as Ridding Your Existing Google Apps of Security Vulnerabilities, Develop With Security In Mind From The Start, and maybe a session on Why It's Easy To Develop Securely Than To Bolt Security Onto Your Application Later.

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