Career Profile: Alex Shipp, Anti Virus Technologist/Imagineer

He might have remained working in quality assurance training and toiling in database research, or focusing on solving what he likes to view as "tricky" IT problems. It's very likely he wouldn't have ended up writing one of the first CCMail virus scanner programs, and moved on to become a top email security expert. While his official title at MessageLabs is Senior Antivirus Technologist, the 43-year-old likes to describe his job as "imagineer."

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Shipp attended Cambridge University, receiving a bachelor's and masters in computer science. His first work stint was for what he describes as "a one-man band" enterprise needing a computer programmer to write terminal emulation programs for CPM mailings.

"Around that time I also did some lecturing and taught Windows NT, kind of spreading the gospel of technology," says Shipp.

It wasn't until that chance train meeting did the idea of code preventing email viruses hit his professional horizon. The man he met told him about an idea to build software that could scan email for viruses before allowing them into the corporate network and mailboxes.

"He asked me to write a virus scanner, and it was so interesting that I did it and didn't even charge him for it," recalls the 43-year-old with a laugh. Though the product worked well when completed, the product was overpriced for market he recalls—costing clients a thousand UK pounds while other known programs were costing just 40 pounds.

But while that program didn't grab market share, Shipps' experience in creating email virus programs had already caught the attention of a friend working with Internet service providers that were seeking a similar technology solution. That connection eventually led Shipp to joining MessageLabs.

"It was a series of great coincidences [my career path] and meeting the right people and getting the right breaks," says the technologist who's been with MessageLabs for eight years.

Commercial success arrived when MessageLab's email virus solution, coded by Shipp, stopped one of the first big email threats—the Lovebug—which hit enterprises in 2000.

MessageLabs, a UK-based company, scans nearly a billion business emails each week on behalf of 14,000 business customers and that list includes governments, the Bank of New York, Bertelsmann, Random House, SC Johnson and StorageTek. Over the past year or so the company has added Web and instant messaging filtering to its product and services portfolio.

Shipp serves as the architect and lead programmer for the vendor's carrier class email system, and is the architect and lead programmer for Skeptic, MessageLabs' heuristic virus scanner. His current research areas are focused on heuristic detection of malware and investigating the spread patterns of mass mailing viruses. His software code has been cited as directly responsible for automatically detecting and stopping major mass mailing viruses from LoveBug, to AnnaKournikova, Nimda, SirCam, Goner, Klez, and Frethem.

The best thing about his job, says Shipp, is that no workday is ever the same, and that's also the reason his current role has been his best job to date.

"The worst part is when they're calling you at 3 am about a new threat," he adds.

His advice to IT professionals looking to move into security work is pretty simple. "You have to be keen to the technology and enthusiastic and also grab whatever [career] chances that come up with both hands."

Security professionals, he says, also have to be patient and yet tenacious. "there are so many different areas within IT security to work in it's exciting." Career gratification, he adds, is important as well. "I feel I've made a big different in email scanning, helped to solve some of the problems and I hope to keep doing just that."

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