A Question, Obviously, you're leaving.... But it also sounds that it's the right choice.
First off, once you leave, contact the CEO and inform him of his vulnerabilities and offer to fix them at a seriously high cost as an independent contractor.... Keep it confidential at every level. If he does nothing, well do as you will... Before you leave, an inter office memo about your security measures and what you were unable to implement, will save you from being the whipping post after you leave. This memo needs only to be specific enough to authenticate your work but do not point fingers in any way. Lastly..... this CIO person.... Don't burn this bridge !! Once you're gone he'll continue to lie and make excuses. This person will pay even more that the CEO to save his own skin when the time comes. On your way out, let them know you'll be a "hired gun" for a time and that maybe you'll be in touch. If you're as good as you think, you'll be fine. If not... nothing will come of your efforts and this should present a sign as to what you should consider for your future. In your position, strategy my friend... strategy. You'll always get more bees with honey...... If you're looking for a new career... let me know where you're living... I possibly could help with a few recommendations. There are very serious companies currently looking for talented security people. J Goetsch -----Original Message----- From: A Question [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2002 12:38 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Is it bad enough to resign? 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 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. 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! 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. 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? Thanks __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send your FREE holiday greetings online! http://greetings.yahoo.com
