On Tuesday 01 January 2002 02:37 pm, A Question wrote: > Greetings, > > Beg your parden for sending, but I could use your > advice. > > I have been reading this list for some time and have > benefited from it. There are some good minds on this > list, and a lot of experience, so I submit my question > to you seeking your perspective. > > Before I begin, I want to tell you that I have already > made up my mind weather to resign or not, what I am > needing is perspective as the company I work for is > the only one I have worked at as a Systems > Administrator, and the only one that I have been > responsible for securing the system.
> The security for the network and servers I administer > is NON-EXISTENT. This is not only fine with my > superiors, but I have been told to not work on > security anymore, as it is "un-important". The CEO > thinks that it is secure because my CIO lies and tells > him that it is. > > Here is some background. We have approx. 14,000 IP's > in a stub network (only one way in or out on the > router). Since those IP's are mostly used to host > virtual hosts, there is over 100,000 total paying > customers that depend on our systems being secure. > > We tell customers and the CEO that we have a firewall > - it's a lie. > > * WE HAVE NO FIREWALL ON OUR ENTIRE NETWORK. > * WE HAVE NO INTRUSION DETECTION ON OUR SYSTEM if customers are being lied to you might want to contact relevant authorities. > We use Linux and Windows. Windows is even more > pathetic as we depend on hotfixes and Service Packs as > our ONLY form of Windows security. They won't let me > put Snort on it, and they won't buy Black Ice, or > anything else. Is this due policy or something else?, there might be some obscure thing where you cannot add/change software on a customer's machine or something(if its like a rented rackserver or something) or for snort, something in their policy about monitoring traffic, since snort would have to do that. > To top this off, the CIO refused to let me apply > Service Pack 2 to Windows for months after the > release. I brought it up every week at our management > meeting. Finally, several Windows machines were > compromised so that the cracker had admin level access > for weeks before it was even detected. This would > have been prevented if they would have only let me > apply SP2! The CIO kept saying that he could hear me > saying "I told you so". The CIO lied to the CEO and > said that it was not a Admin level intrusion, but > merely a rouge FTP account used for Warez. The > cracker could have formatted the drives with data at > any time! you should point out any lies your CIO tells to the CEO and if the CEO doesn't care than you work in a poorly run company(of course the CIO shoudln't lie in the first place) > > It gets even worse than this, but you get the idea. I > prevented Nimda and Code Red attacks even while > everyone else was wondering what they are. > > Do they promote me? Reward me? No. Apparently, they > are too embarrassed as my CIO and Managers that they > are incompetent in security (they setup up the systems > this way, after all), and seeking to keep me quiet, > they demoted me so that I wouldn't be responsible for > security anymore. As far as I can tell, the only > reason I was promoted to Security Manager was so that > they could have a fall-guy when things went wrong "How > did they do that? Weren't you doing your job?". But > when their scheme backfired and I actually did such a > good job that their position in front of the CEO was > threatened, they decided to keep me quiet. that might just be a bit of paranoia, C?O's have a big interest in a well operating company, and if you were doing so well they would be reluctant to relocate you even if they didn't like you. it could just be an extension of their seeming misunderstanding of security issues. were you actually demoted or just given new responsibilities? > Am I being paranoid? Am I overacting? Your > perspective from your experience would be greatly > appreciated. Also, after I leave, should I send a > letter to the CEO about this? maybe you are overreacting, but if you do send a letter to the CEO make sure it's not full of anger, also if the CEO doesn't seem to care you might want to contact a major shareholder(if you have any). > > Thanks > >
