After a month

The last 40 days I have seen and learned a lot about human nature. About organizational hierarchies. About processes and systems. About laws and procedures. And I have started to understand why large organizations, steeped in bureaucracy will never be able to innovate.

My job is an Information Security Auditor. Sounds pretty fancy, right? This job is part grunt work, part great work. I spend my time either at client sites poring over their documentation, interrogating the various employees about business procedures and policy shortcomings and raising questions like why in tarnation do they store their financial data backup in a safe with the family jewellery.

The last mentioned accident happened at a broker office.This was a small firm, with the office and the residence of the CEO two buildings away. Every night the daily logs were taken on a portable HDD and kept in the CEO's safe. When we questioned the practice he gave a look reserved for imbeciles and started a long, entertaining, rambling lecture. It began with the cribbing about fire safety regulations (what will they do to the data if there is an atomic explosion? tell us to keep the data in lead lined boxes???), went on info about how to save yourself from a thief (kick the low life in the penis!!) and ended with his guns (I have a Mauser and an elephant rifle and practise regularly on the shooting range. There is no bastard born who leaves my place in one piece after a robbery). Phew. Wonder how many rascals he had killed. He also swore that when he gets on the governing body of the exchange he was going to shake things up.

Take it easy, man.

While I may come across a guy who loves to pick faults and mistakes, a well run IT shop would get my highest praise. People just need to get out of their comfort zone and get more educated about their work, especially those who work in sensitive posts. Start ditching IE 5, don't plug in USB drives in production computers, don't use the name of your family dog as the password. Surely that can't be hard, eh?

UPDATE: The lines above this post were written about a month ago....somehow I never got around to posting them. So the title makes change. Right now I am in green and clean and cool Chandigarh, enjoying the life that moves a bit slowly. More on Chandigarh in a later post.