It's hard to believe that 2006 is almost at an end, so I thought I'd better take advantage of this moment to say thanks to everyone who's contributed to making this year a successful one for Skype and for my security team. There are lots of people inside Skype I'd like to recognise, but in doing so I'm sure I'll miss someone, so maybe it's best to just say a general "thank you" to everyone who's worked so hard to improve our product security and customer communications.

I'd like to express my appreciation to those in the incident response community, the membership of FIRST, and the security researcher community who have been so willing to share their findings and observations with us this year. We truly value your contributions and we pledge to continue to listen to your ideas and thoughts in the coming months and years.

Finally, I'd like to offer my personal thanks to my colleagues and friends both in the information security industry and in my shodokan aikido club for your personal support during this extremely busy year. I don't know if I could have done it without you.

Happy holidays,

Kurt Sauer
CSO, Skype