Best Western seem oblivious to social engineering too. I attended my sisters wedding last weekend at a Best Western Hotel and the pre-arranged DJ failed to come with the "first dance" I spoke with the Hotel Manager and he gave me about 20 mins of full admin access to his laptop in order to install iTunes and download the song for the DJ. He also left the office whilst I did it.
The customer is always right..... Even if his desktop had applications linking directly into their financial systems. I did make some comments but as he was doing me a favour I wasn't exactly about to tell him about his lack of concern for security.
And yes I didn't access anything, the wrath of my sister mean't I was fully focused on the job at hand:)
A number of years ago I was placed on a MCSE boot camp, the company was thoughtful enough to negotiate a cut price with the training company as a result of not including the actual certification but just sticking me on the course. At the time I was the Systems Administrator, 6 months prior I had migrated the Netware data centre to Windows 2000 as a result of political pressure. I wasn't too keen on attending the courses as I had numerous other projects running at the time but thought that it would be an opportunity. On my arrival I was greeted by three members of middle (non-tech) management from my organisation and a large group of Helpdesk operatives from an outsourcing company. The course bored me to tears and fortunately or unfortunately I was removed after 3 days to oversee an impromptu acquisition back at the ranch.
Two weeks later the middle management returned, all having been certified. Upon questioning the certification I was told "It is not in the companies benefit to invest in your certification, you can do the job without the certification. Why should we invest in something you can already do?" The individuals who recieved the certification shot up the management chain and after a number of months left the organisation. I wouldn't have employed them to defrag a disk, yet their CV's were certainly much rosier than mine. From that point on I have always questioned certification, not one member of my current team is certified but they all have a proven track record and a degree...
Having been recently dismissed from a 6 year IT career in the UK I have witnessed the market shift totaly. This may just be the organisation that I worked for but I get the impression that it something that is occuring in all the major organisations, specifically those who are outsourcing. In my first few years on the job, my IT skill set kept me in my position. My ability to provide solutions to problems and know my way around a number of languages, products etc. Towards the end of my tenure what became more usefull was my ability to sit in meetings, say yes to the right people and stop my ear catching on fire when on 4 hour long conference calls on the mobile phone. My eventual dismissal came after breaching health and saftey regulations (Driving too many miles in a day, completing a task that was neither IT related or with any significance to the business from what I could see). I am lucky because my previous management team had left the shop floor a number of years ago and have been after my services within an hour of the announcement being made. The new breed of IT people being recruited have no technical degree, infact an IT degree is not a requirement, knowing who to call and who to outsource too is the current requirement. I would like to say that I took the fall as a cost saving measure, but the new breed start on significantly more.
Personally I love working in IT, or IT as it was before. Now I have serious doubts, everyone I speak to tells me to contract and to be honest if working in a permanent IT position means that I have too spend a whole morning speaking to dozens of different people in a number of countries to arrange for a task to be completed that would honestly only take up 30 mins of my own time if I was to do it myself then I don't really wish to stay in the industry. I am hoping that I have got out at the right time, I doubt it though....
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Best Western seem oblivious to social engineering too. I attended my sisters wedding last weekend at a Best Western Hotel and the pre-arranged DJ failed to come with the "first dance" I spoke with the Hotel Manager and he gave me about 20 mins of full admin access to his laptop in order to install iTunes and download the song for the DJ. He also left the office whilst I did it. The customer is always right..... Even if his desktop had applications linking directly into their financial systems. I did make some comments but as he was doing me a favour I wasn't exactly about to tell him about his lack of concern for security. And yes I didn't access anything, the wrath of my sister mean't I was fully focused on the job at hand :)
A number of years ago I was placed on a MCSE boot camp, the company was thoughtful enough to negotiate a cut price with the training company as a result of not including the actual certification but just sticking me on the course. At the time I was the Systems Administrator, 6 months prior I had migrated the Netware data centre to Windows 2000 as a result of political pressure. I wasn't too keen on attending the courses as I had numerous other projects running at the time but thought that it would be an opportunity. On my arrival I was greeted by three members of middle (non-tech) management from my organisation and a large group of Helpdesk operatives from an outsourcing company. The course bored me to tears and fortunately or unfortunately I was removed after 3 days to oversee an impromptu acquisition back at the ranch.
Two weeks later the middle management returned, all having been certified. Upon questioning the certification I was told "It is not in the companies benefit to invest in your certification, you can do the job without the certification. Why should we invest in something you can already do?" The individuals who recieved the certification shot up the management chain and after a number of months left the organisation. I wouldn't have employed them to defrag a disk, yet their CV's were certainly much rosier than mine. From that point on I have always questioned certification, not one member of my current team is certified but they all have a proven track record and a degree...
Having been recently dismissed from a 6 year IT career in the UK I have witnessed the market shift totaly. This may just be the organisation that I worked for but I get the impression that it something that is occuring in all the major organisations, specifically those who are outsourcing. In my first few years on the job, my IT skill set kept me in my position. My ability to provide solutions to problems and know my way around a number of languages, products etc. Towards the end of my tenure what became more usefull was my ability to sit in meetings, say yes to the right people and stop my ear catching on fire when on 4 hour long conference calls on the mobile phone. My eventual dismissal came after breaching health and saftey regulations (Driving too many miles in a day, completing a task that was neither IT related or with any significance to the business from what I could see). I am lucky because my previous management team had left the shop floor a number of years ago and have been after my services within an hour of the announcement being made. The new breed of IT people being recruited have no technical degree, infact an IT degree is not a requirement, knowing who to call and who to outsource too is the current requirement. I would like to say that I took the fall as a cost saving measure, but the new breed start on significantly more. Personally I love working in IT, or IT as it was before. Now I have serious doubts, everyone I speak to tells me to contract and to be honest if working in a permanent IT position means that I have too spend a whole morning speaking to dozens of different people in a number of countries to arrange for a task to be completed that would honestly only take up 30 mins of my own time if I was to do it myself then I don't really wish to stay in the industry. I am hoping that I have got out at the right time, I doubt it though....
Maybe a $400 Million Bad Taste redux would be good.
Plenty of scope for effects and I for one would pay $10...