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That's a hard call. Should you send an email after you resign,
knowing full well that probably nothing will change? Or should you at
least do it as a pride thing to let the CEO know that there are
"theives among us".

Personally, I'd send him a detailed letter, and I'd probably even go
as far as sending it to his home. After all, that will get his
attention, and he'll know your serious, than if you did the "slide
the envelope under the door and walk out" approach.

FWIW, I wouldn't be sitting around not doing anything, that's for
sure. And if you resign, which from the tone of the email it sounds
as if you are, I'd make sure that it's clear why you're leaving. I'd
just be prepared for the CIO and his henchman to make a case against
you to the CEO, especially after they get word as to why you're
leaving.

With that said, it's too bad that certain companies have this kind of
attitude. It really is...but I've seen this kind of attitude before.

One things for sure, I'd chalk it up as experience. It's funny, but I
usually see this within small "mom and pop" organizations, if you'll
excuse the term.

Regardless, good luck.


/*
 * Woody Hughes
 * Sr. Info Security Analyst
 * Security Products Services
 * Corporate Information Protection Division
 * --------------------------------------------
 * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 * Phone: 415.243.5846
 * Fax: 415.975.7468
 */

- -----Original Message-----
From: A Question [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2002 12:38 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Is it bad enough to resign?


Greetings,

Beg your parden for sending, but I could use your
advice.

I have been reading this list for some time and have
benefited from it.  There are some good minds on this
list, and a lot of experience, so I submit my question
to you seeking your perspective.

Before I begin, I want to tell you that I have already
made up my mind weather to resign or not, what I am
needing is perspective as the company I work for is
the only one I have worked at as a Systems
Administrator, and the only one that I have been
responsible for securing the system.

The security for the network and servers I administer
is NON-EXISTENT.  This is not only fine with my
superiors, but I have been told to not work on
security anymore, as it is "un-important".  The CEO
thinks that it is secure because my CIO lies and tells
him that it is.

Here is some background.  We have approx. 14,000 IP's
in a stub network (only one way in or out on the
router).  Since those IP's are mostly used to host
virtual hosts, there is over 100,000 total paying
customers that depend on our systems being secure.

We tell customers and the CEO that we have a firewall
- - it's a lie.

* WE HAVE NO FIREWALL ON OUR ENTIRE NETWORK.
* WE HAVE NO INTRUSION DETECTION ON OUR SYSTEM

We use Linux and Windows.  Windows is even more
pathetic as we depend on hotfixes and Service Packs as
our ONLY form of Windows security.  They won't let me
put Snort on it, and they won't buy Black Ice, or
anything else.

To top this off, the CIO refused to let me apply
Service Pack 2 to Windows for months after the
release.  I brought it up every week at our management
meeting.  Finally, several Windows machines were
compromised so that the cracker had admin level access
for weeks before it was even detected.  This would
have been prevented if they would have only let me
apply SP2!   The CIO kept saying that he could hear me
saying "I told you so".  The CIO lied to the CEO and
said that it was not a Admin level intrusion, but
merely a rouge FTP account used for Warez.  The
cracker could have formatted the drives with data at
any time!

It gets even worse than this, but you get the idea.  I
prevented Nimda and Code Red attacks even while
everyone else was wondering what they are.

Do they promote me?  Reward me?  No.  Apparently, they
are too embarrassed as my CIO and Managers that they
are incompetent in security (they setup up the systems
this way, after all), and seeking to keep me quiet,
they demoted me so that I wouldn't be responsible for
security anymore.  As far as I can tell, the only
reason I was promoted to Security Manager was so that
they could have a fall-guy when things went wrong "How
did they do that?  Weren't you doing your job?".  But
when their scheme backfired and I actually did such a
good job that their position in front of the CEO was
threatened, they decided to keep me quiet.

Am I being paranoid?  Am I overacting?  Your
perspective from your experience would be greatly
appreciated.  Also, after I leave, should I send a
letter to the CEO about this?


Thanks



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