[VOIPSA Best Practices] Welcome to the VOIPSA Best Practices project... and some weekend reading for you all (if you get this)

[dan_york at Mitel.com]

VOIPSA Best Practices list,

Welcome to the Best Practices project!   First off, may I just say a huge 
thank you to all of you for wanting to help with this project.  As the 
list admin, I've been watching the subscription notices stream in and 
we're now up around 90 people.  I recognize many of you from the VOIPSEC 
mailing list, from Blue Box podcast listeners, from conferences... but 
just as many I don't recognize... and I look forward to working with you 
all.

Thank you for your interest in helping.  The continued escalation of news 
reports about VoIP security as well as increased postings to security 
lists only highlights how timely and important this project is.

I may be completely naive, but I honestly don't think this will be an 
enormously long project.  I think that with the collective knowledge we 
have on this list, we can probably lay out most if not all of the required 
best practices relatively quickly.  In fact, I think the thing that may 
take us the longest may be agreeing on how to structure the document. I 
would like to think that this is a project we can complete over the next 
couple of months, realizing that the holidays are in here, of course. 
We'll see.

But before I talk about the project, let me just make a couple of points 
about my style and availability, given that many/most of you have not 
worked with me before:

1. As you'll see below, I've laid out a *suggestion* for how I think 
things should be structured... but please keep in mind that those are 
*suggestions*... I *very* much want to hear your feedback and am 
definitely open to change.
2. Please know that I am VERY open to feedback/criticism/suggestions.  I 
have a very thick skin and enough self-confidence that I'm perfectly okay 
if you tell me an idea (or text) of mine is very dumb. (Preferably being 
polite while doing so.)  Please do so...  my objective is to get the best 
possible set of Best Practices that we can- as quickly as we can... I'm 
not interested in having egos (including my own) get in the way.
3. Unfortunately I'm getting on a plane Monday afternoon (Dec 4th, Eastern 
US time) heading to London, UK, where I'll be through the end of the week 
(Dec 8th).  There will be periods where my email connectivity will be 
limited and, of course, my Verizon blackberry will not work for email 
there.  (The perils of living in Burlington, Vermont, where GSM coverage 
is limited.) 
It would actually be far better for me to wait a week to launch this 
project, but I very much want to get it moving so that we can get some 
work done before the holiday break. 
I'll be back in the office Dec 11th and don't expect to be travelling 
after that until late January.

So on to the project.  If you go to the main project page in the VOIPSA 
wiki:

  http://wiki.voipsa.org/tiki-index.php?page=BestPracticesHome

you will see that tonight I've created the following pages:

- A proposed development process and document structure: 
http://wiki.voipsa.org/tiki-index.php?page=Development+Process
- A list of proposed volunteer roles: 
http://wiki.voipsa.org/tiki-index.php?page=Volunteer+Opportunities%2FTeam+Structure
- Examples of generic best practice statements: 
http://wiki.voipsa.org/tiki-index.php?page=Examples+of+Best+Practices
- References to other "Best Practices" documents: 
http://wiki.voipsa.org/tiki-index.php?page=Best+Practices+References+

What I would be most interested in feedback on over the next week is the 
following:

1. Can anyone point to other Best Practices documents that we can add to 
the reference page?  They need to be publicly available (i.e. not 
requiring registration) so that people can see them.
2. What do people think about how we should best structure the document? 
(See my notes on the Development Process page.)
3. Do you agree with what I identified as the target audience? 
4. I've identified about 10 potential volunteer roles... do you agree with 
my thoughts? 
5. If so,  anyone already willing to step forward and say how they'll 
contribute?
6. Any thoughts on the questions I raise at the bottom of the Development 
Process page?

Two final notes:

- Like other VOIPSA lists, this one is set so that, with most mail 
clients, if you just hit Reply your message will go back to only the 
*sender*.  If you want it to go back to the list, you'll need to do "Reply 
to All".
- This mailing list has a *public* message archive and the wiki is 
entirely public, so please just do realize that everything you send on 
this list or add to the wiki is visible to anyone on the Internet.

With that, I'll again say thank you for joining this project and I look 
forward to working with all of you to make it happen.  If you have any 
questions about all of this, please do feel free to email or call.

Thank you,
Dan

-- 
Dan York, CISSP
Dir of IP Technology, Office of the CTO
Mitel Corp.     http://www.mitel.com
dan_york at mitel.com +1-613-592-2122
PGP key (F7E3C3B4) available for 
secure communication

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