University server in hackers' hands for a year

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Could be many things

It could be one of many things. Outsourcing is possible, but never discount managerial neglect ("We'll worry about your security concerns later. For now just make it work.") or just plain old incompetence.

I work at a college. I and some cooworkers once visited another college to view some neato data wherehousing system they had implimented with SQL server. The data was related to student demographics. When they were demonstrating to us, they logged into the live system with the screen pojected on the overhead, and I was shocked to see this....

Username: sa
Password: **

Yes, that's right. The sa password on their live SQL system was two characters. No doubt it was "sa".

Most of their IT department was outcourced to a local company, and they only had a few in-house people, but I don't think them being outsourced was the problem. I think it was good ol' fashioned incompetence.

Even when sysadmins are competent, my experience is that CIOs/IT heads value availability over security and no amount of explaining will get them to change their mind. Due to the fact that they don't really understand the technology the organization uses, security threats, when presented to them, are at the very best abstract things to them.

Posted by: toadlife   Posted on: 05/21/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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