Something I've noticed already about the IT world is that the trend and the focus seems to be on having fewer, larger, discrete systems to control the flow of information and those systems are becoming more centralized. Contrast that with the software design principles of modularity and least information, which state that simpler systems interacting by sharing only necessary information will make the entire architecture more maintainable and comprehendable.
The extreme financial problems in #Birmingham are less about the settlement of an #equalpay case & more about the disastrous implementation of an #Oracle IT system.
While this has been discussed publicly in the past, its worth emphasising its critical & central role in Birmingham's problems.... like the #Horizon IT problems at the Post Office, a large multinational #informationtechnology firm seems to be causing havoc with impunity!
👋 Valued contacts in IT and specifically in the #PostgreSQL / #Database community: I'd love it if you could reach out to me with insights or stories to tell regarding 🧠 mental health in the #IT#workplace. Many thanks in advance 🙏
60% of cybersecurity incidents are repeats! Learn how combining industry frameworks like NIST & MITRE can help you proactively manage cyber risks & prevent future attacks.
A Belarusian-Latvian national linked to the defunct #cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e faces up to 25 years in prison for an alleged $4 billion money-laundering scheme.
It's frightening how little attention the US press has given to the continuing aftereffects of the British Library cyber attack. If it can happen there, it can happen almost anywhere.
U.S. #cybersecurity agency warns of active exploitation of a critical #Microsoft SharePoint flaw that can let attackers gain admin rights without any user action.
If you have a tiny budget, call someone else. Yes, I’ll be happy to explain…
BACKGROUND FACTOR #1: TECHNICAL DEBT
“Technical debt,” on the infrastructure side, is caused by continuing to use old hardware and software rather than pay in a timely manner for upgrades.
(Note: I don’t manage software teams. Not my skillset. They use the term, “technical debt,” too, and there are similarities. But if you’re a software engineer and you’re reading this post, you’ll need to shift gears and understand it from the infrastructure and systems point of view).
Do you have technical debt? Here’s a constant truth: it costs more to fix the problems than you spent creating them.
BACKGROUND FACTOR #2: IT STAFFING PROBLEMS
Want to know what happens if you skimp on salaries for senior IT people? Here’s what happens: you post a job for a Senior Network Engineer, but the salary is a little low, so the qualified people don’t apply. But some Junior Network Engineer, unhappy at their current company, sees that salary as a step up, and applies. The person/team conducting the interviews really doesn’t understand what’s needed, and they hire “the best candidate” they interviewed. I feel sorry for this poor Network Engineer. They mean well, but they’re about to find themselves in an impossible, stress-filled situation. High turnover in these situations is common.
STORY TIME
I took a gig with a company for a few months that had both of these issues (technical debt and under-qualified staff).
EXAMPLE 1
One day I got a call from the ADP rep: “I told your predecessor months ago that you won’t be able to process payroll in two more months unless you update. I haven’t heard back. What’s the status?” First I’d heard of it. I checked into it and found out the software couldn’t be updated until the hardware was updated. Not even in the budget.
EXAMPLE 2
Another time the Training Manager talked to me. “We’re contractually obligated by our biggest client to provide this training to our retail team in all locations. But our LMS doesn’t support the client’s new training material.” Same situation – we needed to update the hardware before we could update the LMS. No, of course it wasn’t included in the budget my predecessor had prepared.
And on and on…
WRAPPING IT UP
That’s why I say, if you have a tiny budget, call someone else. I do crisis management, and it’s going to cost you. I’m not the big expense, though. My invoice is a fraction of what it’s going to cost you to fix the issues. I’ll work with your CIO/Director/Whatever to lead your team through a cost-efficient path and plan, but cost-efficient is not the same as cheap. Do you have the resolve?
Congratulations to CBI Sr. Research Fellow William Aspray who just published Understanding Information History: The Case of America in 1920 (Springer).
I just got offered a job in basic IT support - basically just the go to person to help people with their personal devices and room to expand in System Admin. The caveat being it will not be strictly under my terms, so trying to move to FOSS alternatives may be a slow process.
Anyone got any recent books to recommend for familiarising particularly with proprietary systems, ie. Microsoft's Azure; Sharepoint
I think it was about 20 years ago that the public university where I worked decided it was time to hire a vice president for information technology. Shortly thereafter, a decision was made to abandon homegrown software for administrative processes (i.e., admissions, registration, financial aid) that was written in Fortran and Cobol. It would be replaced with off the shelf products from commercial software vendors. University processes would adapt to the capabilities of those software packages, which was important so software upgrades could happen without having to adjust customizations to work with those upgrades. In reality, university managers were only willing to adapt their existing processes to an extent and insisted on customizations to the commercial software. Some customizations were also probably necessary to comply with state or federal requirements, since software vendors are not always aware of those requirements or forthright about the limitations of their products.
Looking back at the way things worked before the homegrown software systems were abandoned, to how processes worked after commercial software was purchased and implemented, my impression is that any gains in efficiencies were minimal if they existed at all. Commercial software was expensive and implementing it required extensive retraining of information technology employees and end users. There were in some cases permanent new expenses associated with paying for software contracts, and creating new skilled positions to implement and manage complex new systems. I believe the need for some new positions was unknown to university decision makers for whom the information systems were basically a mystery: They relied on the trustworthiness of information technology staff who said they needed more money because they were not knowledgeable enough to even know what questions to ask. By the time I retired, a decision was made to empty the university library of hardcover books in favor of electronic resources.
Even at the level of desktop computers and software like MS Office, there were ongoing licensing fees. And to what end? The invention of software for word-processing and pretty charts mainly changed how time was spent polishing the appearance of results without adding new fundamental knowledge to the higher education endeavor. The same documents and charts could have been prepared on typewriters and using graph paper as they had in the past. The main downside being they would not be as pretty. Alan Turing did not need MS Office for his work in breaking the Enigma code; Enrico Fermi did not use it in building the first nuclear reactor; Katherine Johnson did not use it for calculating the flight path for the moon landing. In hindsight, the main winners of the transition to commercial software were the software companies that made a lot of money selling their products to the university. They knew little about higher education, but they apparently knew how to sell software.
🕵️♂️💻 Experts from UC San Diego and MIT uncover a new passive attack method on SSH servers, allowing attackers to obtain private RSA host keys without detection.
Great #website for all of your free internet privacy and operating system needs, if it is missing anything please ask as I have other handy free infotech resources also.