Yarrr! Malware ahoy!

My client is currently battling a rather nasty malware infection. Aside from the odd bit of forensic analysis and network scanning, I’ve been less involved in this one than I have in the past.

In this case, that appears to be a good thing. It’s hard to hide my frustration with the process. With upper management getting personally involved, I can’t help but wonder if management jobs are less glamourous that we all suspected. I, for one, want to cling to my romanticized notion of powerful men in boardrooms making important decisions. In reality these people are bored and hunger for their swashbuckling days of technical work.

The problem comes when they don’t realize how out of shape they’ve become. Swashbuckling is fun, and they get suckered into thinking that security is all awking and grepping log files, shutting down network ports, and figuring out what files and registry keys will make them feel secure.

This is the fun stuff, and it makes them forget (or ignore!) important management decisions and communications obligations to the rest of the organization. When several different hired groups of experts tell management, “you can never be secure again without reinstalling from pristine media,” what is so hard about taking their word for it and making it happen?

I don’t think it’s a hard-on for Paula Zahn that makes management so inclined to drop everything (Oh, my god! CNN has a virus!) and shirk their more mundane responsibility.

Swashbuckling is fun. And now that I think about it, I do look good in an eye patch.

I’m off to go get some rum.

Comments (archived)

Binky, on Aug. 18th, 2005 wrote:
Disfunctional Delusional Micromanagement (DDM): It’s how industrial zombies are made from people-meat.