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10% of IT Pros Can Access Previous Jobs' Accounts
dinscott writes "According to a survey that examines how IT professionals and employees view the use of policies and technologies to manage and protect users' electronic identities, the sharing of work log-ins and passwords between co-workers is a regular occurrence. It's no wonder then that half of them are concerned about insider threats to network security in their company's current infrastructure! But one of the most surprising results shows that one in 10 IT professionals admit they have accounts from previous jobs, from which they can still access systems even though they've left the organization."
but is it my responsibility to suggest they change the password? especially since a 'professional' it outsourcing company took it over?
My last action in my previous sysadmin job was to disable my own old accounts. If I find that they're accessible to me again, it means that:
People often leave on good terms and the accounts are kept so the ex-employees can help out later here and there if asked.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
I'm with you right up til you start talking about mandatory password changes. Research has pretty well proved by now that making people change their passwords regularly means they write them down. A written down password provides a worthless level of protection from from almost every attempt to get into a system. Statistically a person with a secure password they can remember is far more secure then any number of new passwords they cannot.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
When I leave a place, or a contract is over, I usually work it into an email to request my credentials be removed, or account disabled. When something goes wrong, the first thing everyone does is point a finger at the last person that left. If my account has been disabled, it's pretty easy for me to prove my innocence and not waste time trying to convince anyone. Also puts a little more weight into your argument when you produce an account revocation document which a company was negligent in following through with. Doesn't sound like much, but makes a *huge* difference when the witch hunt starts.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
People often leave on good terms and the accounts are kept so the ex-employees can help out later here and there if asked.
At my current job, I've replaced a guy who accomplished a hell of a lot in the two years that he was here. There's a good chunk of stuff here that my boss doesn't really feel comfortable with. So he disabled my predecessor's account, instead of straight-up deleting it, in case we had to call him in for help (at which point he would have been paid as an independent contractor).
But that account is disabled. Even though it's still got the same credentials on it, and could be re-activated and used in an emergency, it doesn't currently work. My predecessor could not log in right now if he wanted to.
You'd have to be crazy to intentionally leave an account active and functioning after someone leaves the company.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Most places will happily give you every password in the world when you start a job there. And sometimes the "intermediate" stage between you leaving and someone else doing your job is filled with outside contractors and random people who "need" your passwords.
Whenever I leave an employer, I make a BIG list of everything I know in terms of passwords, passcodes, keys, etc. and compile it on paper or a CD. I put literally everything in there, even down to little foibles of the system and the reasoning for strange configurations. I then furnish the boss with one copy of that CD, hand him another copy to "put in a safe place" (usually a safe) and then leave.
I did this at my last workplace. They were getting increasingly silly and employing people with zero expertise, and I already had another job already lined up so my entire notice period was spent house-cleaning and compiling lists while taking care of the mundane jobs.
Technically I reported only to the headteacher of the school in question, having been employed by him without any formal assignment in a staffing structure (to the point where the local borough phoned up to complain that I was earning too much for any of their pay-scales and had to be put on my own unique one).
When I left, there was no replacement for me (because they weren't interested in employing the only guy out of all the candidates that *could* do my job because he had formerly worked in Tesco's supermarket rather than sit on his arse in the middle of a recession) so I handed off to the headteacher. This immediately caused an argument because one of the new staff who was the new "second-in-command" there (and that decision was partly responsible for me wanting to leave in the first place!) DEMANDED the "admin password for the network".
He wasn't an IT guy. He knew nothing about computers at all. He just wanted it because he was sure that the dozens of digital voice recorders that he'd bought on a whim (without IT authorisation) could be made compatible with the non-networkable, kiddified, decades-old audio editing software he'd bought on a whim (without IT authorisation) on the network he didn't know how to manage, no matter how many times I told him they were incompatible. He was convinced that if he somehow got the "magic" administrator's password and then let 1000 kids loose with it so they could listen to themselves talking, it would solve his problems with not teaching part of the IT curriculum.
Obviously I must have been deliberately lying when his DRM'd-AAC-only recorders couldn't be opened in a program that only took WAV's (not even MP3's!) and that an intermediate conversion step (which he DEMANDED shouldn't be necessary and refused to use) was required.
Apart from the fact there were three networks, there were dozens of different passwords, and he wasn't getting *ANY* of their passwords until I was way outside the building and long gone, I had a duty to protect the information secured by those passwords (information on kids, people's salaries etc.). If you read the rules precisely, that means that I had to hand off ONLY to the headteacher, who could then hand off passwords to others as they saw fit.
So I did just that, in the process making my own day by telling the guy "No." even if he WAS second-in-command there (he didn't seem to understand that I didn't report to him, no matter what he thought of that idea). He was rather miffed. I also, with the head's permission, gave a copy of the CD to the lead governor of the school who was a big-iron IT guy for his day-job, that we both knew we could trust - he would be fixing any major issues that occurred in the school until they could find a replacement and he was there to sign-off on my hand-over.
A week later, a phone call from the second-in-command. He'd got the administrator password, tried it out on several PC's and couldn't do what he wanted (ignoring the fact that he wasn't using ANY of the network software management that we had in place). So he demanded that I give
If only the company who commissioned this survey happened to sell a bunch of account and identity management tools.... Oh, they do? What luck!
I know I still got access because they called me from a previous job if I could help them out and I just tried my login during the call to see what was going on and it was still there. I just thought "oh", fixed the issue and mailed that I still had access and left it at that.
I am a pro but not a sys admin. If I do not work for them, I do not have a need to access their servers and so I don't. Not very hard. Disgruntled? Even then I wouldn't because it would be against the law and could seriously hurt future employment.
The trick therefor for companies is to both have good account management AND hire professionals who care about not becoming a criminal.
Seriously kid, to anyone who read this, you just gave a massive reason NOT to hire you.
Do I as an employer constantly have to worry if it is that time of month for you?
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