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Why Should I Trust My Network Administrator?
Andrew writes "I'm a manager at a startup, and decided recently to outsource to an outside IT firm to set up a network domain and file server. Trouble is, they (and all other IT companies we could find) insist on administering it all remotely. They now obviously have full access to all our data and PCs, and I'm concerned they could steal all our intellectual property, source code and customers. Am I being overly paranoid and resistant to change? Should we just trust our administrator because they have a reputation to uphold? Or should we lock them out and make them administer the network in person so we can stand behind and watch them?"
He enacted that policy because it probably dawned on him that he had no way to enforce whatever the company has in its Acceptable Use Policy (assuming there was one) because they don't own it.
I'm dealing with this issue where I work: Some of our engineers have decided that they can't live without their Macs, so they use the ones they own at work, bootlegging copies of Windows XP, Office, etc. to run under Parallels. Their managers turn a blind eye to it, because it "saves the company money", but it creates a potential liability for the company: We can't enforce the company's AUP, which states in part that we do not condone copyright infringement in the workplace, because it's not our hardware.
I had one remote engineer complain to me about his laptop crashing... and then he mentioned that he'd wiped the hard drive and installed Windows 7 RC. WTF?!? Who uses a beta OS for production use? Fucking idiot.
I don't care anymore - everyone shits on MIS, especially the technical employees, who all secretly (or sometimes not so secretly) think that they can do it better... except that they're too busy, of course. And these same people are the ones that act as though the company's Internet access exists for their personal entertainment, and whose computers end up infected with all the latest malware because they absolutely *have* to be local Administrator equivalent full-time on "their" laptop (something that none of us in MIS here do anymore, by the way, and haven't for years), and disable or uninstall the corporate antivirus software... and a few of them have asked for Domain Administrator rights... no fucking way. And they won't backup even their work data, despite the fact that they've been given the means to do so easily, and if they want, we'll issue them an external USB hard drive so that they can do it at their convenience.
One lawyer decided that he didn't want to wait for the automatic data sync that takes place for laptop users after logging in when connected at the office, and unbeknownst to us, took it upon himself to move his documents folder... hard drive died, and the backups on the network were over 6 months old. The backups of all of his current work documents relating to pending litigation, etc., which represents literally millions of dollars to the company? All more than 6 months old, and useless. Why, the backup must have stopped working, he said... Bullshit - that's why God made logs, and why we keep them. I cheerfully pulled them for the past 6 months, and proved that the backup was working, but that no current documents were getting backed up because there were none to back up... and after we got the USB hard drive with his recovered data back from the data recovery company (and almost $3K later)? There was his data folder, right where he'd made it, off the root of the drive - imagine that. Vindicated, I gathered up all of the evidence, emailed it to my boss, and let him handle it.
And I guess the end of this little rant is this: You know, you might well be smarter than me, better than me, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Good for you! But, I'm damned good at my job, and take pride in doing it to the best of my ability, even after 20+ years, and knowing that so many of you think that I'm incompetent, stupid, ignorant or all three, and believe that you're special and don't have to abide by the company's rules.
And if that sounds more than a little bitter and antagonistic - well, it is: At my company we run MIS as a service to the users and the company, and do our best to keep everything working well and available to everyone, working long, unpaid hours sometimes to do so, responding to pages 24/7, because we know how important the network is to everyone, and that it's our job to keep it running and available. We keep "hot spare" computers, at least one for each model in use, so that we can minimize downtime if someone's breaks, handling the repair after getting them back up