Has anyone but myself thought of the implications this will have on encryption and security... or a lack there of?
As I'm sure most of you know, SHA-1 has been proven to show signs of collisions on todays computers. http://rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2738 Now imagine what would be possible with 500GHz. Amazing!
I understand your frustration as I too have worked for a company that acts this way. The only two "nice" things I can say is that it takes persistence with time and baby steps. If they're willing to let you get an "assistant" you should contact the Career Centers from the surrounding colleges and inform them of an open internship. Obviously you get what you pay for so offering an unpaid internship will not render the greatest results, but you will get some takers.
If you're not willing to wait forever you could always take the more dangerous approach and let a few things that are "not covered" under your title break. Maybe security doesn't fall under your jurisdiction and a virus / Trojan infects the network. There are a thousand different scenarios that I could run thru but I'm sure you get the idea.
In the past I've started by educating my employer's using slide shows and reports with statistics. Of course it helps to somehow relate the size and type of business that you work for to these statistics. When this didn't work I stopped doing things that were "not covered" under my title and waited for them to break. As sad as it is, most companies don't understand the potential pitfalls involved in IT networks. They see $$$ signs and flip out, not realizing that a few thousand now could potentially save a few hundred thousand from walking out the door tomorrow.
The company I currently work for used to store most of our data locally. We had a "backup server" running Win2K and that was that. Even though the threat of losing all the information on our servers to fire and water damage / theft was mentioned countless times before it has taken us almost 5 years go get a tape backup system that allows us to keep a full system copy offsite. In this case it was the recommendation by several others aside from the IT manager himself that finally made someone open there eyes.
In my experience it's been up to the flip of a coin toss as to how companies react to change in this department. So try those two suggestions I mentioned earlier and if your not in fear of losing your job maybe the last one and see what happens. Good luck.
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Has anyone but myself thought of the implications this will have on encryption and security... or a lack there of?
As I'm sure most of you know, SHA-1 has been proven to show signs of collisions on todays computers. http://rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2738
Now imagine what would be possible with 500GHz. Amazing!
If you're not willing to wait forever you could always take the more dangerous approach and let a few things that are "not covered" under your title break. Maybe security doesn't fall under your jurisdiction and a virus / Trojan infects the network. There are a thousand different scenarios that I could run thru but I'm sure you get the idea.
In the past I've started by educating my employer's using slide shows and reports with statistics. Of course it helps to somehow relate the size and type of business that you work for to these statistics. When this didn't work I stopped doing things that were "not covered" under my title and waited for them to break. As sad as it is, most companies don't understand the potential pitfalls involved in IT networks. They see $$$ signs and flip out, not realizing that a few thousand now could potentially save a few hundred thousand from walking out the door tomorrow.
The company I currently work for used to store most of our data locally. We had a "backup server" running Win2K and that was that. Even though the threat of losing all the information on our servers to fire and water damage / theft was mentioned countless times before it has taken us almost 5 years go get a tape backup system that allows us to keep a full system copy offsite. In this case it was the recommendation by several others aside from the IT manager himself that finally made someone open there eyes.
In my experience it's been up to the flip of a coin toss as to how companies react to change in this department. So try those two suggestions I mentioned earlier and if your not in fear of losing your job maybe the last one and see what happens. Good luck.