Provided you have the project assignment from your director in writing (or e-mail) then you should have no qualms about doing your job. If the Manager of the Server and Network Group starts stonewalling you, then you could either (a) have a conversation with HIS boss or (b) go back to the Director and explain how the Manager is hindering his getting the reports and have HIM talk to the Manager's boss.
If you feel that you are backstabbing by doing this without notification then send an e-mail to the Manager of the Server and Network group TELLING him what you are going to do and who authorized you to do it. If he gives you any problems, see the above paragraph. Furthermore, if he is concerned that you will "crash his routers and switches" then offer to run the tests late at night/early in the morning: 4:00 a.m. for example. One big thing that you could put in all of your communications is "how a security incident could affect the bottom line" and "how one security incident could kill this company's reputation." You work at a financial institution for pete's sake. Security should be the PRIMARY concern. Point being, you have to do your job to the best of your abilities. If others are hindering/prohibiting you, it's a management issue. HTH Jeremy Shelley MCSE, MCT, MCIWA, CIWCI, CCNA, A+, Net+, I-Net+ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------- Technical Trainer New Horizons of <somewhere over the rainbow> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: tony toni [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 2:44 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Political Challenges Using Nessus Folks, I am currently experimenting with Nessus. I also have a spreadsheet of all IP addresses that our company uses (about 10,000) and it has a detailed description of each IP address. As you can appreciate a hacker would love to have this spreadsheet. My situation... I currently work in the Security Group and I *sort of* have approval to run Nessus to perform vulnerability assessments. This is a new responsibility that is being forced upon my director. He assigned me this project but has little interest in what I am doing, is a moron about security issues, and will be the first person to stab me in the back if anything goes wrong. However, he is also putting a lot of pressure on me to do the assessments and produce reports so he can look good to his VP. My next challenge is the Manager of the Server and Network Group. He is very territorial and is not responding to my requests for partnering with him while I run Nessus. He does not want audits done on his servers/firewall/routers. I think he is either afraid of what I will find out or I will cause some damage. He is also a moron on security issues. My problem... I am not sure if I can trust either my Director or the Manger of Network/Servers if I start running Nessus. Both have a keen sense of corporate politics and only look out for themselves. My manager want results..but then he offers no support and will *nail* me hard if I make any mistakes. I have been a *bad boy* of late and have been running Nessus on several production servers without telling anyone. Found lots of security weaknesses. None of the system admins are aware that I have run these tests (must not be looking at their logs). I want to continue running Nessus on switches, routers, firewalls and more servers. I want to really build a case for using Nessus and all of the security problems this company has. This is my question... 1) What are the political risks I may come incur if I run Nessus without formal approval? In other words, running Nessus against any IP address I want and without telling anyone what I am doing? I am afraid that if I list the IP's I want to go against...I will run into a bunch of political road blocks. I want to impress everyone that I can successfully run Nessus and not hurt anything and everyone will say great job. On the other hand...this could back fire on me and I could get *nailed* for doing these audits in the *stealth* mode. 2) From a technical viewpoint...can I run Nessus against a switch, router, firewall and not worry about bringing these devices down? Currently, I use the option "disable all dangerous plug-ins"....so I feel I using it safely. I am sure that others on this list have had the same sort of political challenges. I am impatient...I hate politics ..I know I can pull this off. Problem is management is getting in my way. What is your answers to my questions? Tony Security Project Lead Major Financial Institution on West Coast _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
