School laptop spying case? Blame it on IT.

[thewayne]

So apparently they're now blaming the IT department for not having proper procedures and controls in place. And who directs the IT director? Management, in this case the school board. If you don't tell IT to do something, it frequently doesn't get done and clearly the big picture was not seen by most people in this case.

Big mess, it's going to cost the district some big bucks.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/report-blames-it-for-bad-procedures-in-school-spying-case.ars

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/05/06/1925245/Lower-Merion-Schools-Report-Says-IT-Dept-Did-It-But-Didnt-Inhale

Comments

[silveradept]

"It's not our fault. We didn't do anything. You can't blame it on us."

Some of those statements are demonstrably false. Makes me suspect the "impartiality" of the "independent" investigation.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

The investigation was anything but independent, no doubt.

A friend of mine, whom I used to work with, went to work at a law firm. One of their clients received a letter from the BSA regarding illegal software. BSA provides (or at least at that time) a self-audit kit, you pop in a floppy and boot the computer, it reads the directory and wrote all .COM and .EXE entries to a database. The law firm couldn't conduct the audit, so I got three days of consulting to do the audit and prepare a report.

Sadly, they were majorly out of compliance and apparently coughed up some major bucks. It was, of course, a disgruntled former employee who reported them.

But at least my audit was independent.

[silveradept]

Yeah. I would trust a firm that would rip them a new one for everything they did and lay it out in unflinching terms than one that attempted to provide them with a fig leaf of cover that they could hide behind and deny responsibility for.