FBI: Your real SECURITY TERROR? An ANGRY INSIDE MAN Disgruntled workers are causing more problems for their employers, the FBI warns. Employees, ex-workers or contractors with a grudge against their former paymasters are abusing cloud storage sites or remote access to enterprise networks to steal trade secrets, customer lists or other sensitive information. Insider threats …
"In the US this theory is borne out by the increasing number of workplace shootings."
No, it is actually the result of the new "Wargame Wednesday" rule that went into effect last October. Now everybody with a job has to show up for work every Wednesday with an assault rifle in order to "Rightsize" our respective organizations without increasing the number of unemployed people.
"Socrates' solution was to properly train their souls [...]"
Socrates was condemned to death by the government of Athens for corrupting their youth. Judging by Alcibiades complaints about Socrates sharing his bed and just sleeping - the crime was not what our modern sensitised minds might think. The crime was teaching the youngsters to think for themselves - which upset the government who wanted the youth to maintain the system without awkward questions.
"The crime was teaching the youngsters to think for themselves..."
No, the crime was that of instilling anti-democratic attitudes into the youth. Socrates despised the idea of democracy and made no secret of it. Additionally he deliberately provoked the 500 citizen jury, clearly hoping to receive the death penalty, then refused to accept his friends' aid in escaping the execution. He wanted to tar the democrats with his own blood.
The Athenian democracy had just gone thru a hideous and bloody (but short-lived) takeover by oligarchs, and they were in no mood to tolerate someone repeatedly advocating the end of the democracy they had just recovered. Too many had died at the hands of the dictatorship.
Socrates was executed because he questioned the legitimacy of... everything. As a citizen-soldier who showed tremendous courage in battle, he was criticized for his individualism (a quality that didn't work well in a Greek phalanx). After the Athenian military was decimated during a disasterous campaign to conquer Sicily (as part of a desperate attempt to save their empire), Athens was defeated by Sparta and subject to the rule of 30 "tyrants" chosen by the Spartans. Many of these were either followers or friends of Socrates, and in some accounts he gave their anti-democratic rule his wholehearted support (no surprise to anyone who has read The Republic). Socrates' trial and execution come after the overthrow of his friends and restoration of the democracy.
The answer to the question ("who will guard the guardians") is, obviously, no one. Socrates idea that somehow his philiospher rulers would be so virtuous as they could be trusted to rule themselves is ridiculous, and flies in the face of human experience. The fear of being legally held to account for their misconduct is the only thing that can restrain the powerful, whether in a democracy or dictatorship. Then, as now, corruption takes over once that fear is removed.
Some suggestions
1 : The Illuminati - It's obviously a conspiracy anyway.
2 : The Vatican - Being God's right hand man he must be able to protect us ( just not the condom kind of protection).
3 : The Mafia ( Same house as N°2 , just on different levels - although they have a no women AND a no children policy ).
4 : The White House - Thinking Obama with an loaded 100 round AK47 here - he'll show the way.
5 : Bono - A mixture of Jesus Christ and Chuck Norris, the difference being that Chuck knows it's only cinema.
I'm not so sure about Chuck. He caught religion a while ago, and has been of dubious sanity since. The last time I heard from him he was warning of a conspiracy (Headed by Obama, naturally) to cover up the Parkinson's-and-cancer inducing consequences of genetically modified foods. This is actually one of his saner columns.
... after communists, paedophiles and terrorists, it had to be employees - they're everywhere, inside every organisation. Not that their relative numbers should lead us to forget the shiftless unemployed who clearly have a motivation for destroying society. Or neglect the children sitting around learning dangerous ideas from books - clearly they've got a hidden agenda, since they wouldn't be doing it by choice. Or those apparently-innocent pensioners using their bus passes to engage in reconnaissance for their sinister puppetmasters, reporting back their findings in undecipherable crochet.
If the FBI weren't keeping all these people under constant surveillance on behalf of governments around the world, who knows what kind of dystopian state we'd be living in. We clearly need to give them our undying thanks much more money.
Of course the number of incidents caused from intentional internal threats is lower than those from external - unless you're a moron in hiring people, or your company is a really bad one, most employees are honest people.
The real danger is the extent of damage someone who knows very well your systems and has the required access can do. And you may discover it too late (and sometimes, maybe never discover it at all).
"Yessss… most excellent. An excellent excuse to label all our employees as potential terrorists, thus allowing their further devaluation as human beings with ideas and rights."
"But sir! what if by devaluing and defrauding them, we make them more likely to commit acts like-"
"Silence, terrorist!"
Maybe they have just come across BOFH and they think this is happening for real everywhere...
Or maybe its just a case of IT workers generally due to a variety of reasons including globalisation as well as abundance the growing numbers studying / gaining experience within IT that is actually driving down the wages of IT workers in general and thus causing this.
What ever the case when organisations are happy to pay IT professionals no more than they pay their junior office administrators - I can only say what on earth do they expect besides An ANGRY INSIDE MAN
So to reverse this kind of trend - increase the wages of IT workers - some of them did not go to university / done years of studying and are consistently trying to keep up to date - infact some are probably working harder than Brain surgeons in trying understand / keep up to date with the ever changing IT requirements.
has always been the enemy within.
p**sed employee X insider knowledge X poor internal security -->disaster.
PHB's only see power in terms of salary and the ability to hire and fire people.
Employees know there are many other ways to get even, if people are prepared to take the consequence.
Whatever the cause of a data breach problems, enterprises need an incident-handling plan in place before a breach takes place – rather than scrambling to deal with an emergence after the fact,…
An incident handling plan or a do no inequitable and evil business program? Only the one solves the problem and delivers the answers that are needed but it is disruptive and revolutionary and really fcuks up the systems as are presently being attacked daily and zerodaily because of opportunities exploited via unpatchable vulnerabilities/dark web holes/virtual channels.
And that is not a million miles away from dogged/Socrates’s observation ……. Socrates' solution was to properly train their souls, if that helps. …. although on a whole new plane/level of spooky understanding and daring do.
Oops, sorry, that should have been chunnels rather than channels because the very nature of the stealth in action is in an underground movement with novel phorms of code and steganography doing the pornography thing if designed to deprave and corrupt and subvert rather than deny and disrupt and destroy the failing opposition in threatening competition.
And they be quite perfect enough lanes in the HyperSuperVisored Space of SMARTR IntelAIgent Systems and Servers for the ExtraOrdinary Rendition of Future Realities via Presentational Media Programs and NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive IT Memes/Advanced Intelligent Ways and Means.
And yes, that is Current Up and Running and Alpha Beta Testing Execs and Savvier Global Markets for Immaculate Immediate Invisible Intangible Supply to Contractor Partnerships. And the Potent Power in ITs Creative Cyber Command Control of Communications and Computers is securely aided and abetted by the Great Disbelief of Doubt that Generates an Arrogant Ignorance that Petrifies and Transforms a System of Operations and Operating Systems into a State of Paralysis and Stupefaction/Subjugation and Disinformation.
Our Finance and HR departments have people coming and going regularly. When I ask about the recently departed Joe Schlep's account still being in the directory, I'm told to wait.... and 5 years later Joe still has an account....
HR and IT need to work closely when it comes to user leaving the company. And doubly so when and IT bod leaves. I hope your HR department is diligent!
If a sysadmin who wants to cause massive trouble - make a small change to a backup script so that a critical database is not properly backed up - and a timed script that runs 6 months later to corrupt it. Done properly the damage could be extreme - possibly fatal for the company.
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