Horror Stories of IT Management

Tech editor Carla Schroder dissects a recent article about problems with IT management. There’s plenty of finger pointing at workers, but who’s really to blame?

Security fail: When trusted IT people go bad has a great title. Then it’s all downhill. I suppose it’s appropriate for an audience of managers who want cheerleading for bad management more than good information.

It starts off with a tale of ultimate horror: not only is your trusted systems administrator selling you pirated software and incurring the wrath of the BSA (Business Software Alliance), he is running a giant porn server from the company network and stealing customer credit card numbers.

Then it takes the obligatory gratuitous swipe at “rogue” San Francisco admin Terry Childs.

Then we are introduced to Sally, ace IT person who plants logic bombs in all the servers after learning that the IT department is being outsourced to India.

The final horror: Rogue admin, in retaliation for the company busting his secret pirated satellite TV equipment business that he was running off the company’s e-commerce site, deletes the entire corporate encryption key ring even as security personnel are charging into his office shouting “Stop!” 18 staff-years of lost productivity results, because there are no backup copies.

Read the rest at Linux Planet.