brianj ✭✭✭✭✭

It's not easy to secure a database when someone at the NSA is handing hacking tools to China. And it's more fun when companies try to hide breaches instead of actively working against them and sharing knowledge so everybody can learn from how they were exploited.

I agree on all counts. But the worst thing is when you have support from some senior leadership and opposition from others. Nothing quite as nice as having people undermine needed changes.

Wait... making education interesting, entertaining, and engaging will increase retention and improve learning? I think every teacher and professor I have ever had is going to strongly disagree with this conclusion.

I got my missing points! Yay! Thanks!

Rscrhoeder makes an excellent observation. I am continually impressed by how many 'new' concepts or technologies are nothing more than an application of an older, well known concept.

Now how do we get management to accept that one size fits all isn't in their best interest? I still can't get them to understand that a SQL guy shouldn't be assigned to rewrite routing tables because the router guy was assigned to work on a firewall audit, because the firewall guy was assigned to work with the SQL team on…

"Everybody guesses password or password1, so I know I am safe with password2. Nobody's gonna guess that!" "Alex, the question is: what is the dumbest thing I've heard a user say?"

Drowning in tool 9,001? I'm thinking thinking it's closer to 28,000! If only I could get management to agree with you!

Good articles. I'm glad Microsoft is finally taking action on reply-all idiots, but the 5,000 recipient threshold is way too high. I once wanted to write a VBScript to deploy onto workstations so, whenever someone clicked reply all, they would get a popup asking if the message is really for every recipient or just one…

University degrees are no longer worth the cost for most fields. There are a lot of tech schools that will qualify you for a very good job if you have some aptitude, and you don't need to go $40,000+ into debt.

The good news is that I got points for Tuesday. The bad news is that I still don't see points for Monday.

All I see is nebula on Orion;s belt. Where's the galaxy?

How many times have we heard a user insist they did what we asked or they didn't do what we told them to not do? This job breeds distrust!

I thought communication was a soft skill that IT people always needed. Telling someone that keeping their username and password on a Post-It stuck to their monitor is stupid doesn't go over well; we need to be a bit more tactful in how we tell them to not be stupid. Maybe some other peope don't have to fill in and help out…

Just like anything else, management hears that "the cloud" is a really big deal and demands everything be moved there with no concept of what they are discussing. Then when it doesn't suit their needs it's not their fault. At least it provides job security, lots of learning, and new skills for the resume.

Regarding the penetration testing, I wonder how detailed the testing plan shared with the state courts was. If the full details were known to the state but not passed to this courthouse beforehand then charges should have already been dropped. Unfortunately the testers may be caught in a clash of egos between the county…

Cloud computing has a lot of benefits beyond making it easier for hackers to get at your data. A similar complaint was probably made when companies wanted to use the internet to connect offices to one another, but the benefits of doing so are clear and the benefits or cloud computing are also clear.

It looks like three of the four are correct, so I wonder if correct wording should be "what does pairing ARM with Exchange auditing software NOT do?"

It takes a matter of seconds to identify if a user interface was designed to make sense to the developers or to make sense to the users. We always need to remember the users above anything else when desiging new systems.

I once went to an event in Disneyland California like you described: they closed the park, cleared it out, and opened it for us. It is uniquely fun to come to the end of a roller coaster ride, see nobody waiting in line, and tell the operator to send you around again.

It wasn't a breach! It was an incredible feat of carelessness that stored unencrypted data in publicly available databases!

I had a long layover at LAX last week and spent some time watching. I observed more digital and physical security gaps than I expected, just what I want before catching a flight!

An important step in improving the situation would be to streamline government hiring. When I have applied for private sector jobs, I have usually just been asked to send a resume and cover letter that I can customize and transmit within an hour. But government applications often take a full day to get the required…

What is Solarwinds doing for all the IT support reps who keep us from getting fired?

What it all comes down to is focus. We tell the entry level helpdesk people to be focused on their customers, we tell the network and server guys to be focused on their customers' experiences, then we let managers get away with focusing on themselves and their superiors. Great managers focus on their team members

Regarding Zoom, I recently saw an article claiming Elon Musk has ordered his employees to not use Zoom until they have addressed their security issues. I doubt this will have a significant impact on use of Zoom.

I wonder if the support team could tell us how big VPN issues have become in the last week or two.

Steven beat me to it. But, even if we get AI to develop software, there will probably be bugs in the AI that get propagated.

After all the other comments I knew I should wait before answering the question, but I answered anyway. No points.

It's very easy to imagine what would happen. When I get really frustrated with users I sometimes wish every IT person in North America would take their lunch break at exactly the same time (adjusted for time zone so we're all gone at once) and leave our cell phones in the office. Of course people would just get upset at us…