Are Background Checks Necessary For IT Workers?

4foot10 writes "UBS PaineWebber learned a hard lesson after hiring an IT systems admin without conducting a background check. Now its ex-employee is slated to be sentenced for launching a 'logic bomb' in UBS' computer systems that crashed 2,000 of the company's servers and left 17,000 brokers unable to make trades."

Comments

Of course not!

[susano_otter]

Background checks are a blatant violation of our right to privacy!

Our entire civilization will be replaced by a fascist tyranny the moment we allow background checks to happen!

What was the cause?

[AK Marc]

Prosecutors charged that Duronio, angry over not receiving as large a bonus as he had expected, sought revenge against his employer [... who] spent about $3.1 million to assess the damages and restore the computer systems, [... and] haven't reported how much was lost in business downtime.

In retrospect, it appears that the entire event, as well as the financial damages and the hit to the company's reputation, could've been avoided if UBS PaineWebber, a giant in the financial community, had done a background check on Duronio when he had been hired.

And I see the problem as being caused by a lack of bonuses in IT. Prevent logic bombs, give your IT workers large bonuses!

(I'm talking to you, boss)

Re:Ask yourself this question

[AnotherBlackHat]

Would you like your email to be read by someone you don't even know? Well that is what could happen if you hire a SysAdmin and do not conduct a background check.

So if I run a background check, my email will be read by someone I do know?

-- Should you trust authority without question?

Re:Are you serious?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

> Are background checks necessary for Sys Admins at a financial institution?

For sysadmins it should be called a wallpaper check.

Re:Ask yourself this question

[jwarnick]

I'm consulting for a 17,000 person multi-national firm. Most of the the internal infrastructure, including email, is outsourced to HP India. It is my experience that HP India is staffed by diploma mill graduates. These are the people reading your email.

His bonus...

[TranscendentalAnarch]

was supposed to include a red swingline!

Come on now

[t00le]

Where will I be able to buy my weed from if they find out our BOFH has a cultivation of marijuana arrest twenty years ago?

Re:The communists won after all

[Anonymous Coward]

Collectivism doesn't mean some guy collecting bottles of pee.

Re:This is funny

[jesdynf]

Hey, everybody, help me out here -- is there a specific logical fallacy that covers this, or do we need to make a new one?

If we do, then I'm going to formally recommend we entitle the fallacy of assuming one snapshot of a vocal fragment of a pseudoanonymous userbase represents the beliefs of every such member, and can be compared to other such snapshots without limit, the "Damn You, User #4466" logical fallacy.

So, back to you, RelliK. You say that Slashdot lambasted Diebold for hiring criminals, then lambasted the article for daring to suggest that background checks were a good idea? That Slashdot is unbalanced, hypocritical, and biased?

Damn you, user #4466!

Re:Little/no reward

[Lehk228]

they could take the rounding errors from millions of transactions each day and deposit those errors into their own account, then the crazy guy you just fired will burn the building down

Re:Ask yourself this question

[glrotate]

Hang on. You're a bad person if you've been arrested? Doesn't matter whether you were actually guilty of anything? Probably. There's enough crime out there that cops generally don't waste their time arresting innocent people.

Re:This is funny

[Sj0]

Make up your mind, Anonymous Coward, is Bush the heroic liberator who brought us into our mighty victory of morality and justice and law in Iraq and in so doing struck a blow against terrorism, or is Bush the cowardly army deserter who brought us an illegal, immoral war against a red herring of a irrelevant despot in the middle of the war on terror?

God, you're so hypocritical sometimes! It's like you're arguing with yourself!

Re:Ask yourself this question

[umghhh]

there exists a cheaper solution - outsource the IT dep to China.
Chances are that chinese legal system i.e. firing squads will deal with the problem more appropriately. Even if not then at least you saved something. At the very least the idea should bring some bonus to the person that proposed it.

Re:Ask yourself this question

[Jesus_666]

Although I would be interested to see the coding-equivalent of engrish :)

// Saying it is great, together.
// Warned: Danger when fifty more than size is present!
int great_operation_of_high_addition_talk(int incrementor_number, int adder_number)
{
// Memorizer of the chestnut is great reservation
char * holder = malloc(sizeof(char) * 50); int addition_chestnut = 1;

// Let's increment by the great opportunity of addition!
do
{
adder_number += addition_chestnut;
incrementor_number -= addition_chestnut;
} until(!(addition_chestnut - 1 !=
incrementor_number)) // it is done

// Adding we are finish, it is enjoyed to write the figure
sprintf(holder "%50d", adder_number);

// The saying, it is
printf("%50s\n\l", holder);

free(holder); // given freedom for holding entity, it lessens the space taken
}