SAN JOSE -- EBay plans to host its own security conference next February, called "Red Team eBay."

The conference will be held on eBay's campus in San Jose and will take a cue from Microsoft's Blue Hat event, said eBay CIO Dave Cullinane. It will be invitation-only, where security team members can meet and exchange ideas with industry experts. But unlike Blue Hat, the conference will be open to attendees from other companies.

In fact, this will be the second Red Team conference hosted by eBay. Earlier this year eBay quietly held its first Red Team conference, drawing participants from about 100 companies, Cullinane said. "This time I may make it a little smaller," he said Wednesday in an interview at the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) AppSec 2007. "It was literally 90% of Silicon Valley and most of the banks."

EBay is also playing host to the AppSec conference, which is been held at the company's San Jose headquarters this week.

The e-commerce giant has developed its own in-house antivirus system, called AVS (Anti-Virus Scrubber) but Cullinane believes that it may make more sense to work more closely with other security companies in order to develop ways to solve common security problems.

Microsoft began its twice-yearly Blue Hat conferences in 2005, and the events have become a popular way for company employees to get up to date on the latest security threats.

The most recent Blue Hat was held in September.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.