SF Not an Exception In Giving IT Too Much Control

CWmike writes "The city of San Francisco's IT department is certainly not the exception when it comes to allowing just one person to have unfettered rights to make password and configuration changes to networks and enterprise systems. In fact, it's a situation fairly common in many organizations — especially small to medium-size ones, IT managers and others cautioned in the wake of the recent Terry Childs incident."

Comments

Here come the elephants.

[Harmonious Botch]

I forget who said that "an elephant is a mouse designed by a committee." Sure, you can get paranoid about network design and control, and give the job to a committee. But that is going to be really clumsy.

The issue here really is not about size of the design team, it is about vetting the guy who does it. ( The guy who is in charge of the network for my business is someone who I really know and trust. He was best man at my wedding. )

Not qualified to comment.

[Shaitan Apistos]

Whenever I register for a site where my email address is my username, the password I use happens to be the same password that I use for my email account.

With that in mind, I'm going to go ahead and not express any opinions on security.

A Lesson from Star Wars

[jackspenn]

Some people on /. think it is best to have one knowledgeable person with all the information so that confidential information is not leaked or changes made without the lead guy being aware.

Others think of the bus rule, what happens if the guy who knows everything about mission critical infrastructure components gets hit by a bus?

That is why I have taken a page from the Sith Lord Darth Bane and apply the rule of two. When I build a network I teach and train one apprentice. Then if they suck I fire them and hire a replacement, but if they are good, when I get bored and decided to move on, I feel confident they can take on a apprentice themselves.

It is neat, clean and simple, better still it doesn't have the rules and complexity of Jedi type systems requiring me to check in docs to a source control system, report changes to managers what don't understand, have managers that don't understand sign-off on things they don't understand and avoid dumb rules like not being able to train techs that appear to old, etc.

Yeh, if you ask me the Republic, I mean Network as a whole is best off with Sith types in charge versus bureaucratic Jedi types.

Banks deal with this

[mlwmohawk]

One of my first jobs was a bank teller. Our passwords were sealed in an envelop, which we initialed, and locked in a vault which needed two keys to open.

If the two officers needed my password, they'd open the vault, open the envelope, breaking my seal (letting me off the hook of responsibility).

IT has to learn from banks.

Re:God complex

[smooth wombat]

and the risks that entails when they go bad.

It's not just when they go bad. What happens if they get run over by a bus or a stampede of wildebeests? If they are the only person to know the admin passwords, commands, etc, they are the single point of failure, regardless if they go bad or not.

Just as we harp on backing up our files (um, yeah), we also need to harp on a backup for the admin. There should always be someone else, even if it's the mayor, who also has the list of admin passwords.