Should He Be Fired?
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This is an interesting thread about a company that fired their admin. They found out he'd done some things for personal gain and let him go. And found out that the old Admin had encrypted files and probably passwords with a question of how to attack the problem.
There are probably a few things you could do and I suspect that most files could be recovered, passwords unlocked, etc. At the very least this company needs to go to Wininternals.com and grab their administrator pack.
But it does bring to mind some interesting things that should be done. And of which most managers are not aware because they're not tech guys. They are really depending on the IT staff to be professional and above board. Think about it, as a DBA or system administrator, you are entrusted with most of the data of the corporation. Even if you have setup folders for the executives, how do they know you really can't access them? Or that you've set it up correctly?
I know that in most of my small companies I've maintained some type of password system. Lately it's been password safe with copies going to trusted IT people, but I've always tried to be sure the CFO or CEO had a copy as well. If for no other reason than I decide to take my kids and move somewhere and never come back. Or I get hit by the proverbial bus. Centralizing too much control without letting other people have a way to recover is a bad idea and one I hope I never leave anyone in. Or get left in.
The worst mess I ran into was when I was hired as a replacement DBA and the previous guy had made a mess of source control. It was worse than if there was none. Not only had he encrypted all the views and stored procedures on the production machine, he'd put them into VSS and made multiple projects. And not like Prod, Dev, QA. No, he had put in there v1, v2, 10-22-98, beta, and more titles so no one had any idea of which version was in use.
To top it off, he'd also checked out the projects multiple times on his machine and left 2-4 copies of every stored procedure in different places on his drive. That was a fun project trying to get things back in order just to be able to make changes.
If you are a DBA, remember that you are in a trustworthy position and hoarding information, especially passwords, is not the type of thing a professional does. It puts you in a position of being legally liable if there are issues, it doesn't look good, and it doesn't protect you.
I really try to take care of my people, but if someone refused to document and share information I'd let them go immediately.
Steve Jones
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The Omega files At the time, a relatively new statute made computer sabotage a federal offense if it affected a computer used in interstate commerce and caused more than $5,000 worth of damage to the company over a 12-month span.
Timothy Lloyd is doing 41 months for his attack.
I look at holding back the passwords the same as theft of property. The data belongs to the company and by his actions he is denying them access.
Just my $0.02
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Jim P.A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.
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Sounds to me like a management issue. Whether incompetence or corruption of the DBA/Admin, it's ultimately the responsibility of management above him. As for laws protecting you, it would be hard to prove maliciousness (over incompetence) in many cases, so like all other laws, depending on them to save you never kept anyone from getting murdered, run over by drunk drivers, etc.
Fire his ass and put the manager who hired him on probation. Oh wait, there are laws against firing incompetent people aren't there? who will save us?
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