Traffic tsunami created by Redmond admins

The equivalent of an electronic tidal wave -- originating from the Microsoft campus in Redmond -- hammered the ZDNet Australia servers earlier this week.

On Tuesday at the AusCERT conference, I interviewed Mark Estberg, Microsoft's director of internal security, who told me that he is considering taking away admin rights from most of the company's employees.

It may have been a sneaky plan to inform Microsoft staff of their fate while Estberg was safely on the other side of the planet enjoying the Queensland sun.

Well if it was, it worked real well.

[Click to enlarge] Traffic tsunami from Redmond

As the majority of ZDNet Australia stories are written for the Australian market, it makes sense for most of the readers to come from Australia. However in this particular case, the traffic was heading in from the United States.

Specifically, from the north-west -- Washington State.

Look a bit closer and yes, yes guessed it. In the first 24 hours, it seems pretty much everybody in Redmond had read the story, which made the traffic stats look rather odd.

On Wednesday afternoon I bumped into Estberg, who was sitting with his laptop open, seemingly responding to e-mails.

When I approached him he thanked me for writing the story but admitted he had received 'one or two' e-mails from some of his staff asking him when the new procedures would be put into place.

Although it was probably more like 100 or 200 by his expression.

I assume Microsoft staff spent the rest of the week downloading and installing anything they may have been putting off -- just in case Estberg implements his policy on return.