Shark Tank

24.04.2006
Easier said than done

On this city government's old mainframe, printing out monthly financial statements requires running multiple programs and swapping out more than a dozen reels of tape. "Of course, the end users are totally oblivious to the behind-the-scenes mechanics," says a pilot fish there. "One day, the IT boss is filling in for the computer operator, who's on vacation. The city comptroller walks into the computer room and says, 'OK, Fred, push the button and let 'er run.'"

Too much

This database administrator -- "he describes himself as 'not just a DBA,'" reports a pilot fish in the know -- wants to remove an error code on an Oracle system because he's sure the system is wrong and he's right. "He described the problem to his assistant DBA, who didn't argue with him," says fish. "Then he asked his supervisor for permission to remove the error code. He told his boss that the system was erroring when a number was divided by zero -- 'and everyone knows that five divided by zero is one.'"

Too subtle

IT guy sends an e-mail to the whole company. Subject: Phishing examples. "He described two classic examples of convincing phishing attacks," says a pilot fish who got the message. "He attached the two original e-mails, and also included the directive, 'Notice where the links take you.' Less than an hour later came the follow-up e-mail: 'DON'T CLICK THE LINKS.' I guess his original description of the evil e-mails was a little too subtle for some users."