petergwilson · Monitoring Specialist · ✭✭✭✭✭

I don't think anyone in the UK is worried about mobile banking fraud. Our banking systems are rarely up long enough to allow someone to hack in. Every day there are news stories about yet another banking outage.

Pedant alert. Q15. "All of the above" would include A, B, C, D, and E but E says "Only A & C" so doesn't make any sense. I claim my free 'Out of Stock' mug.

We run a hybrid environment and I think I have finally got them to understand that we should be monitoring it. We need good security people but we also need good management who actually listen to the security people. We also need stronger punishment for those who attempt to break in to systems and cause damage / steal…

I was half way through university.

Not that long ago I had this discusion with senior, non IT, manglement. "You just cost us a load of money but what do you actually do for the business ?". I said, "OK, I'll just turn off all the servers and we'll see just how much busines you can do". Funny how quickly they said noooo. I think they really do know they…

Somehow I just can't get into the 'giving my hard earned to someone else' thing unless it is giving pound notes to the barman in return for beer.

What needs to be moderated about that ?

Soft skills have always been required in all sectors. Nothing has changed. I'm the SysAdmin so am expected to be the go to guy when everyone else gets stuck. That means I need to have all their skills but to a greater extent. I also have to be patient with them, mentor them and help them to progress. I also have to be nice…

Good stuff there. Interesting to note that the guy responsible for us using combinations of upper case, lower case, numbers, special characters and letter/number swaps has come out and said he was wrong and that made it easier for accounts to be hacked. Unusual to find an industry 'expert' admitting a mistake. The man…

Self healing robots. Great idea. Maybe in the future they can replace the self healing humans we already have.

I can imagine the way the USA is divided up into small counties each running their own IT would make it very susceptible to hackers. I can also imagine it is very difficult to force any sort of centralised security policies. I guess the State of Emergency would allow the perpetrators to be shot on sight (I'd be OK with…

Yep, really bad as you 'CAN' do all of them but you would need permission first for two of them. 

Space might be very very big but the little bit around our planet is getting pretty congested. It will soon get to the point that, IF we have to leave, we won't be able to.

When facebook first appeared I had a look at the T&Cs and decided to give it a miss. People used to laugh at me for not being on facebook. They don't any more.

B.O.F.H is still around. It's on The Register but searching for BOFH on google will bring up the site. The latest one was the 12th Jan 2018.

What ? Have a train between two major hubs. The UK managed to do that in Victorian times and they still work. OK they are crowded and overpriced but they do move a lot of people relatively quickly and take a lot of traffic off our much smaller roads.

It's hard enough keeping track of the packets as they bounce all over the world on our network without having to track them through someone else's stuff as well. Doesn't help when microsoft's own accounts get hacked. Microsoft Outlook hack gave full access to email contents - CNET

Blockchain is STILL a solution looking for a problem to fix. 

Russian Hackers. It would be interesting to see the data on who gets hacked quickest. I guess they would only be able to do this for people or organisations that they are actively targeting. That would suggest either state sponsored hacking or corporate espionage to me. It's unlikely they would have people just sitting…

I used to work at the London Fire Brigade. One day I was asked to set up a generic e-mail account for the False Alarm Reporting Team. Yep FART@London-fire.gov.uk. You couldn't make it up.

Makes me really happy that I have never used twitter. To be fair I barely use SMS.

I'm quite happy for a robot to be picking and packing my order. There's significantly less risk of it being wrong or damaging my order. A person towards the end of a long shift will be prone to making mistakes. It's also not a great job. Surely it would be better if they were upskilled and given more meaningful, better…

Yes. I think they don't really understand the risks and associated costs (cost of compliance and fines). They also don't want to listen to the IT guys because we always just seem to be a drain on the company's money. They seem to ignore how much more it would cost to do business without IT. We really need IT representation…

SysAdmins will still be SysAdmins. We have always been evolving to meet the changing IT environment and needs of the user. System monitoring will become ever more important as systems move to the cloud (well you do have to blame someone when things go wrong and blaming Microsoft / Google / Amazon, and being able to prove…

You beat me to it. A drawbridge and portcullis are useful. i.e physical security. Keep the doors locked. Restrict access. Test your fire supression system. Don't keep your backup tapes next to the servers. Really really important. Don't keep the door keycard control system behind a door managed by the door keycard system.…

Pork belly looks good but you really need an Ulster Fry for breakfast.

I'm not letting microsoft anywhere near my machines (personal or work). I wouldn't trust them not to muck up my GPO settings, drive mappings, customised software configs etc. We have a very complex set up due to the nature of our business. There's no way they would take the time and effort to get it right.

Microsoft have been gathering data about us for many years. They don't care about fines as they make more money in a few seconds than any fine would be. I had to go for an eye test recently. I had a voucher from my employer so didn't have to pay. I had my staff photo ID card so could prove that I was the person on the…

I do own my own books and music because I download them and keep offline copies. Maybe working in IT has some benefits.

That's really serious withdrawal symptoms. I suggest beer (and bacon of course).