The Terry Zink Security Talk blog comes to an end

  • Article

Please note: The Terry Zink Security Talk blog is being deprecated in March 2019 in order to focus our attention (and yours) to the vast amounts of information we already have on the support.office.com and the docs.microsoft.com sites.

Some of you may have noticed that the amount that I post on this blog has lessened over the years, and especially this year. This is not for lack of ideas, but simply lack of time to write good, in-depth articles.

However, irrespective of that, this is my last blog post on this blog.

After spending 14 years at Microsoft (which includes my time with Frontbridge) in the antispam business - fighting the spam, malware, and phishing, and talking about reputation and everything related to email - I’ve decided change is in the air and I’ve made the difficult decision to move on from Microsoft to the next chapter in my professional life.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Microsoft, having been given the opportunity to work on world class projects and features. It is satisfying to see so many of the things we’ve worked on together getting used by millions of people around the world. Yet the key piece in that sentence is the word “together” because beyond working on great software, the most rewarding piece is working with so many great, hard-working, and talented people. There really is no better reward than that. I know we all get heads-down with developing the things we need to get done, but when I look around and see the things that everyone else (other than me) has gotten done, it makes me proud to say “Hey, we’ve all done something great here!”

I have also enjoyed writing this blog. It has given me the time to practice my writing skills, helped me organize my thoughts out-loud, given me a log to refer back to, and made it possible for me to refer back to features I worked on years ago. If any of you reading this found it valuable, I am pleased I could be of service.

You can still find me at various places around the web:

  • On Twitter
  • On LinkedIn
  • On Facebook (I know Facebook sometimes takes flack, but I really enjoy seeing the personal stories people have like posting vacation pics, or life milestones; this is something that I would never see on Twitter or LinkedIn. It helps get us out of a professional context and instead into a friendship context which I hope transcends work… and politics)
  • On Quora

I haven't decided whether or not I will start another blog. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. It depends on where I end up, and those other platforms have a bigger audience anyway.

I thought it would be appropriate to share the oath we here in the antispam team who have been here a little longer had to swear by when we first joined. It’s quite techno-geeky, but they make us do it in a secret ceremony. The part in bold is my own addition:

Spam fighters, and now my watch begins,
It shall not end until my metaphorical death (that is, when I leave the company).
I shall send no unwanted email, hold no typo-squatted domains, populate no spamtraps.
I shall wear no black hats and win no glory. I shall learn how to send email via Telnet and Powershell.
I am rod that reels in the lures of phish. I am the spreader of the net. I am the shield that guards the realms of email servers.
I pledge my honor to the Spam Fight, for this night and all the nights to come.

And now my watch is over.

Thank-you for reading this blog.