4 ms·

Sorry guys, but most of the comments in this thread remind me of why we IT people have so much bad PR to overcome. We're blaming the user for our mistake. Tha

by edw519 16y ago

Sorry guys, but most of the comments in this thread remind me of why we IT people have so much bad PR to overcome. We're blaming the user for our mistake. That's like blaming the cow for leaving the pasture because one of us forgot to lock the gate. The simple fact is that this user should have never been able to be in a position for this to happen. Where were the IT security policies and procedures? Why was mission critical data on someone's c: drive? When (if ever) was the last audit? We curse enterprise IT departments because they are so slow at getting things done, but they are really, really good at putting in place the things that would never allow this to happen. I have customers with strict policies regarding the protection of mission critical data, and I bet that none of it is as important as what was routinely put onto this laptop and paraded around town. Public companies are responsible to their shareholders and the SEC. Private companies are responsible to their investors and creditors. Why weren't the same protections put in place to the trustees and taxpayers in this case? Every nanosecond this researcher has to worry about performing routine IT overhead is a nanosecond not spent on critical research. The technological solutions to problems like this have been around for years. Why weren't they in place? It's about time for IT to stop blaming the user and fix the problem.

sophacles 16y ago
I'm sick of this attitude of "Always be super nice and make sure you over mother your users" crap. You know what: If my car engine seizes because I haven't changed the oil, no one tells the car makers or the mechanics they didn't do thier job right. If I leave the oven on all night and get CO poisoning, no one blames the oven maker for it. If someone doesn't buy renter's insurance we don't blame the apartment owner for them losing their net-worth. PCs have been almost ubiquitous for 20 years now. For my entire freaking life I have been hearing about how "you need to back up your data". We have consistently made better and better backup tools, like mozy, or backblaze. Yet somehow it is our fault some idiot decided "It won't happen to me!". At some point, we just have to have the users be a tiny little baby step of a bit responsible for their stuff too. Just like accounting makes people responsible for their inventory and expense reports. Just like HR makes people responsible for their own insurance stuff. Sure they help, but crap - people need to be a little grown up in their lives and actions. Just because this person did not bother to find out about backups from her IT does not make it ITs problem. Hell, you don't even know if there was or wasn't the ability for backups in place. Most university IT shops have lots and lots of capacity and backup options in place -- and they are documented, they just don't force users to do it. You know why? Sanctimonious asshats come from the other direction then, complaining not about how IT must mother the employees, but instead must back off the draconian rules to make users feel more welcome. tl; dr -- Users should be held to some standard of responsibility and IT is damned when they do and when they don't.
- mseebach 16y ago
  Emphasis on Mission critical. We're not talking about an arcane enterprise IT organization keeping you from going on Facebook (or HN for that matter) on your lunchbreak, or considering an upgrade to IE7 over the course of 2011. We're talking about mission critical data. Data, without which the mission cannot succeed. It was not even backed up. That's not the users fault, it's a systemic failure of the organization, a failure it was/is ITs responsibility to fix.
- doron 16y ago
  You need a license to operate your car, not so with your PC. {edit} Some of your users might well be incompetent computer users and wont pass the "test". I have often thought about why people dont do backups even when the new tools are easy for most to handle. I think the reason is psychological in nature. Backup implies that you are at least cognizant of the impending disaster scenario. many people avoid even thinking about this, why think of bad news?. Engineers are accustomed to this way of thinking, its a different mental makeup, we shouldn't assume the general public shares this point of view, especially since most of the time they are led through their computing experiences by "wizards" and "guides" might as well be priests.
  - varjag 16y ago
    > You need a license to operate your car, not so with your PC. I own a car, pay insurance on it, but never in my life had a driver license. My wife drives it, working on my insurance bonus. But since it's my vehicle, am still responsible for all the stuff around maintenance, meeting requirements for road worthiness, etc.
  - sophacles 16y ago
    Really? Then how the heck to insurance companies stay afloat? How do home security companies profit? Sorry, this doesn't pass the absurdity test.
    - doron 16y ago
      Perhaps that is the point, you shell off the responsibility to somebody else, pay some money to some 3rd entity and you have insurance, and you pay premium the more lacking you are in responsibility. Thats not to mention the case that some insurance policies are a legal requirement, case in point car insurance.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
doron 16y ago
Hear Hear, true for nonprofits as well, in my mind perhaps even more so, as they exist for the public trust. I got some fire and ire, restricting users software choices and tools, as it was a zoo before. It is too bad, I dont want to restrict anybody, but to maintain the integrity of the organization information, offer reliability and keep cost low, choices and policy have to be enforced. Every desktop folder and user folder is synced to a server, restrictions on personal data stores are monitored, and enforced. critical data is copied to an onsite and offsite datastore. I am met with some dissatisfaction by more advanced users at times, but when their desktop/laptop gets fucked (3 year avg for laptop harddrive it seems) login on to a spare and having your desktop just the way you left it, is a huge relief for users. and we are just a museum, we are not solving the worlds most dire problems.
randomwalker 16y ago
What you say makes perfect sense, but as an academic I have to say it is extremely unlikely that the policies and procedures you mention can be carried over from corporations to academia in a straightforward way. Academics react extremely badly to being told to follow procedures as part of their daily workflow, especially ones they don't understand the importance of. In fact, a big part of the reason that they're in academia in the first place is that they're not able to handle the mundane requirements that are usually in place in the "real world." For example, someone I work with complains incessantly about the fact that department IT forced him to upgrade from pine — pine, in 2010 — because it is no longer supported. If the IT folks tried to institute rigorous procedures, they would be instantly vilified (and ignored). Unlike in a company where there's a hierarchy, professors don't have anyone above giving them orders, and aren't used to the concept. Of course, scientific protocols themselves often require lots of procedures, but this is very different because it comes from within and is well-motivated from the point of view of the scientist. Let me clarify: I do think it is very important that what happened here doesn't happen again, but ensuring that is much harder than someone not familiar with the system might assume. It probably needs to be a mixture of carrots and sticks; I'd say a lot more carrots than sticks.
- nkassis 16y ago
  There is nothing wrong with pine (well other than mutt is better) in 2011.
- gvb 16y ago
  I use mutt (preferred pine) to email code patches. All those clicky-gooey email clients spindle and mutilate code patches. There are configuration work-arounds for some, but it is impossible to prevent Outlook from destroying a patch.
dholowiski 16y ago
Agreed. If you're an IT guy and you haven't put a proper backup strategy in place for your users, you should be fired (and I am one).

by edw519 16y ago

sophacles 16y ago

I'm sick of this attitude of "Always be super nice and make sure you over mother your users" crap. You know what: If my car engine seizes because I haven't changed the oil, no one tells the car makers or the mechanics they didn't do thier job right. If I leave the oven on all night and get CO poisoning, no one blames the oven maker for it. If someone doesn't buy renter's insurance we don't blame the apartment owner for them losing their net-worth. PCs have been almost ubiquitous for 20 years now. For my entire freaking life I have been hearing about how "you need to back up your data". We have consistently made better and better backup tools, like mozy, or backblaze. Yet somehow it is our fault some idiot decided "It won't happen to me!". At some point, we just have to have the users be a tiny little baby step of a bit responsible for their stuff too. Just like accounting makes people responsible for their inventory and expense reports. Just like HR makes people responsible for their own insurance stuff. Sure they help, but crap - people need to be a little grown up in their lives and actions. Just because this person did not bother to find out about backups from her IT does not make it ITs problem. Hell, you don't even know if there was or wasn't the ability for backups in place. Most university IT shops have lots and lots of capacity and backup options in place -- and they are documented, they just don't force users to do it. You know why? Sanctimonious asshats come from the other direction then, complaining not about how IT must mother the employees, but instead must back off the draconian rules to make users feel more welcome. tl; dr -- Users should be held to some standard of responsibility and IT is damned when they do and when they don't.

mseebach 16y ago
Emphasis on Mission critical. We're not talking about an arcane enterprise IT organization keeping you from going on Facebook (or HN for that matter) on your lunchbreak, or considering an upgrade to IE7 over the course of 2011. We're talking about mission critical data. Data, without which the mission cannot succeed. It was not even backed up. That's not the users fault, it's a systemic failure of the organization, a failure it was/is ITs responsibility to fix.
doron 16y ago
You need a license to operate your car, not so with your PC. {edit} Some of your users might well be incompetent computer users and wont pass the "test". I have often thought about why people dont do backups even when the new tools are easy for most to handle. I think the reason is psychological in nature. Backup implies that you are at least cognizant of the impending disaster scenario. many people avoid even thinking about this, why think of bad news?. Engineers are accustomed to this way of thinking, its a different mental makeup, we shouldn't assume the general public shares this point of view, especially since most of the time they are led through their computing experiences by "wizards" and "guides" might as well be priests.
- varjag 16y ago
  > You need a license to operate your car, not so with your PC. I own a car, pay insurance on it, but never in my life had a driver license. My wife drives it, working on my insurance bonus. But since it's my vehicle, am still responsible for all the stuff around maintenance, meeting requirements for road worthiness, etc.
- sophacles 16y ago
  Really? Then how the heck to insurance companies stay afloat? How do home security companies profit? Sorry, this doesn't pass the absurdity test.
  - doron 16y ago
    Perhaps that is the point, you shell off the responsibility to somebody else, pay some money to some 3rd entity and you have insurance, and you pay premium the more lacking you are in responsibility. Thats not to mention the case that some insurance policies are a legal requirement, case in point car insurance.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

doron 16y ago

Hear Hear, true for nonprofits as well, in my mind perhaps even more so, as they exist for the public trust. I got some fire and ire, restricting users software choices and tools, as it was a zoo before. It is too bad, I dont want to restrict anybody, but to maintain the integrity of the organization information, offer reliability and keep cost low, choices and policy have to be enforced. Every desktop folder and user folder is synced to a server, restrictions on personal data stores are monitored, and enforced. critical data is copied to an onsite and offsite datastore. I am met with some dissatisfaction by more advanced users at times, but when their desktop/laptop gets fucked (3 year avg for laptop harddrive it seems) login on to a spare and having your desktop just the way you left it, is a huge relief for users. and we are just a museum, we are not solving the worlds most dire problems.

randomwalker 16y ago

What you say makes perfect sense, but as an academic I have to say it is extremely unlikely that the policies and procedures you mention can be carried over from corporations to academia in a straightforward way. Academics react extremely badly to being told to follow procedures as part of their daily workflow, especially ones they don't understand the importance of. In fact, a big part of the reason that they're in academia in the first place is that they're not able to handle the mundane requirements that are usually in place in the "real world." For example, someone I work with complains incessantly about the fact that department IT forced him to upgrade from pine — pine, in 2010 — because it is no longer supported. If the IT folks tried to institute rigorous procedures, they would be instantly vilified (and ignored). Unlike in a company where there's a hierarchy, professors don't have anyone above giving them orders, and aren't used to the concept. Of course, scientific protocols themselves often require lots of procedures, but this is very different because it comes from within and is well-motivated from the point of view of the scientist. Let me clarify: I do think it is very important that what happened here doesn't happen again, but ensuring that is much harder than someone not familiar with the system might assume. It probably needs to be a mixture of carrots and sticks; I'd say a lot more carrots than sticks.

nkassis 16y ago
There is nothing wrong with pine (well other than mutt is better) in 2011.
gvb 16y ago
I use mutt (preferred pine) to email code patches. All those clicky-gooey email clients spindle and mutilate code patches. There are configuration work-arounds for some, but it is impossible to prevent Outlook from destroying a patch.

dholowiski 16y ago

Agreed. If you're an IT guy and you haven't put a proper backup strategy in place for your users, you should be fired (and I am one).