[conspire] Meanwhile, in birdland (was: Anyone here looking for a s/w job?)

[Syeed Ali]

On Sat, 19 Nov 2022 10:09:09 -0800
Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> Quoting Nick Moffitt (nick at zork.net):
> 
> > In short, a SysAdmin/SRE with a moderate amount of experience in the
> > industry (I consider myself relatively young, still, but the mention
> > of "10+ years experience" makes me realise I run out of fingers and
> > toes before enumerating my own time in this job) posted a long list
> > of disaster scenarios that keep folks like us awake:
> > 
> > 	https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1593541177965678592.html
> >  
> 
> Deirdre brought that over to me, and I went through it in her
> presence, blanching at lots of spots, because, yeah, that.

Holy crap.  I had to take a couple of breaks while reading and I'm going
to have to re-read.



I'll also add "the value problem":

One of your minor locations vanishes.  Failover has been silently
working and local users didn't notice.  Your on-site staff aren't
answering calls from office, mobile, or personal lines; they are lost
to the void.

Only key systems, and none of the backups, can be remotely accessed.
While remotely administering the location, your connections are
cut, failover fails, and the region goes offline.

An investor learns of this and sarcastically comments they are okay with
washing their hands; losing access to that regional market, the
equipment expenses, and any costs associated with terminating employees.

One of your more worldly employees gets a word in edgewise through a
column of managers to suggest the "conspiracy theory" there has been
political strife there and maybe the site was seized and the staff have
been black-bagged.  That conversation explains that revolutionaries need
money and your company's enemies *have* money.  Is your data safe?  Do
you you have staff with critical information in their brains?  Are
*they* safe?

A mid-level employee becomes available for ransom.


-


This is some combination of:

 9 - The site goes dark at 4am.
15 - The FBI wants to inspect...
17 - Another country is telling you that they want all of your data
     on their users stored on servers in their country.
27 - Physical security of your offices.
29 - Rebellion.
30 - Bus Factor.
45 - DATA LOSS.
46 - Data loss again.
47 - Deletion.
49 - Governmental interference.
50 - Replication.
51 - Employee account privileges / service accounts.



Q:  How bad can it get?
A:  Yes.