Sys-Admins Reading the Bosses Mail?

PetManimal writes "Computerworld has an article about IT staff who have access to corner-office email. Systems administrators, database administrators, storage administrators and higher level IT super users are the types who may access sensitive executive information; one source quoted in the article says that in a company with 1,500 employees, there might typically be five to 10 administrators who have this access. As for how many abuse these priviledges, it's hard to tell, but rogue admins out for workplace revenge or personal gain can wreak havoc: '... Experts agree that the severity of these occurrences generally makes them more harmful than external attacks. One of the biggest obstacles to eliminating unauthorized access is determining how many people have it. Access lists are particularly difficult to formulate in both mature companies, where the number and power of administrators have expanded over periods of years, and small companies, where rapid growth leads to undocumented tangles of administrators who are able to maintain their access because nobody has time to assess their status.'"

Comments

Re:Clearance Control

[Dun Malg]

Since the government is already produces nothing tangible and operates as a net drain on the economy anyway

It's fascinating how this particular piece of right-wing propaganda has become gospel through sheer repetition. When you add up the cumulative value of roads, schools, firehouses, ports and other government-sponsored projects it is most defintely NOT a net drain on the economy. Quite the contrary - it drives the economy.

It's fascinating how this particular piece of left-wing propaganda has become gospel through sheer refusal to see the government for what it is. When you add up the value of the individual investment that could have been made with all those tax dollars had the government not siphoned it off to build a bridge to nowhere in Alaska, and send me and my friends to get shot at and occasionally killed in horrible places like Afghanistan, it's not that hard to conclude that government is not the most efficient mechanism for well-targeted economic stimulation. The first 20% of the tax bill obviously helps the economy, keeping roads, schools, yadda yadda, etc. running; but the remaining 80%? We get maybe fifteen cents benefit on the dollar for that crap-- if we're lucky. Admittedly, the "net drag" presumes that private enterprise would step in and provide all those economy-boosting bits of infrastructure. This may be overly optimistic, but it's a speculative fiction that's no more absurd than the socialists' apparent belief that without a large, centralized government the roads would crumble to dust and everyone would forget how to read.