This guy signs my cheques?

[superbus.livejournal.com]

A little background for those that haven't seen me post here before: I work for a large company that does "Security in the Clouds"; we're the largest in the industry and getting larger. My LIVELIHOOD, and that of everyone around me except the billing and HR people, is reliant around advanced, don't-fuck-around security based around the needs of banks and medical companies. And I'm good at my job, if I say so myself; a year and a half into the industry and five months here, and I'm likely about to start tier 3 support soon.

My company's CEO needed help with his printers; apparently, he can't print to any network printer. OK, no problem, and it's funny to watch everyone shit their pants about it. "You can't screw this up! He's the CEO! Don't screw this up!", yeah, OK, whatever, I've pissed bigger problems than this. I get to his laptop, and notice that he's got jobs backed up on four different printers, some dating back to June. OK, he's a busy man, whatever. I clear out the queues, and decide to reboot the laptop (which took ten minutes just to close his programmes). No biggie. This, and a reconfiguration of the IPs that the printers possess, fixed his problem with no issues.

When the computer came back up, I needed to log in, and of course, I don't have his password. So I found him and asked him if he could please log in on his computer. He - in front of our entire financial team - blurts out "Oh, my password is $PASSWORD! That's *spells it out*, all lowercase! It was... well, let's just say it was a proper noun and leave it at that.

That's right: the CEO of our security company doesn't practise the #1 rule of computer security.

Ironically - and this just takes the cake - my supervisor pulls me off my work. Since I started with the company, I hadn't taken our mandatory end user security test, and the case had been escalated (I'd blown off all emails about it for lack of time), so I had to do it at that moment. Naturally, it took two minutes, no look at any course material, and I got 100%; any less would have been shameful. They gave me a certificate to print out... signed by this same CEO. My qualification as a non-retard when it comes to end-user security was signed by someone that would have miserably failed the course.

Comments

[wignersfriend.livejournal.com]

I would have offered to sign a certificate for him if he passed the test.

[thebabynancy.livejournal.com]

BA HA HA HA ! ! !

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Do as ah say, not as ah do!

Par for the course

[lrdjester.livejournal.com]

Here, we have people sending through email where it is they keep their passwords written down at, TO ALL CAMPUS.

What's worse is our IT director saw no cause for alarm with that.

[fenrirvallin.livejournal.com]

When you get far enough up management, you get people who are very, very good at their job. And it has absolutely fucking NOTHING to do with whatever the company does.

Honestly, your company is probably better off with him then with somebody who actually knows security in the position.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to get the highest IT guy you can to go have a little chat and fix it. Play it as a "possible embaressing situation" that needs to be fixed quicly and quietly.

...or just make somebody run a security audit including the CEOs. I'm sure that would catch all sorts of fun stuff.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Well, look at it this way... people like your CEO is why people like you are employed. Because if all users were clueful, people like hackers/crackers and other assorted black hats would be a lot rarer!

[ace-brickman.livejournal.com]

that's pretty much been my stance as well... Stupid as they are with computers, I'd be damned to run numbers & (ZOMG!)network & gladhand with other CEO types. In keeping with the 2nd Amendment (think crackers instead of terrorists), if everyone knew their way around fake virus scan popups and other Malware indicators, there'd be a lot less call centers utilized for talking users through reboots.

[forever-damned.livejournal.com]

You'd be surprised how many CEOs have absolutely no idea about the products their company sells or how they work. CEO's are there to take blame, make a choice between Decision A and Decision B and spend stupid amounts of time in meetings and co-ordinating all the different teams and departments.

Executives don't make the big bucks by creating, selling, fixing or distributing - they're delegators, they have people like us to do the rest.

[lovemonster.livejournal.com]

hahhahaa!!! *sides aches bc she's laughing SO hard*