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BOFH: The bastard wants to know

Are you faking it?

By Simon Travaglia • Get more from this author

Posted in BOFH, 19th October 2007 11:02 GMT

Understand how application security is evolving

Episode 35½

IT is a complex business and let's face it, hard to keep up with. At some stage in your career you're going to pass the point of no return where the next technological leap means as much to you as human rights to a defence contractor. But have you passed this point already? Are you just pretending to be the IT expert that you once were????

1. A security consultant produces a comprehensive report on the serious vulnerabilities they've found in your company's network. You:

A. Take one look at the report, realise that this is serious and get some experts in
B. Take one look at the report realise it's probably serious and get the experts in
C. Take one look at how thick the report is and get the experts in
D. Take one look at the report and push it into the shredder

2. A vendor is explaining the finer points of the new hardware their company has produced. You find yourself:

A. Getting excited by the potential of these new features
B. Getting excited by the prospect of getting some new hardware
C. Getting excited by the prospect of the free clothing that comes with the hardware
D. Getting excited by the prospect of the muffins they brought with them

3. You're signing off on the receipt of equipment that you ordered a few months back. The receipting document lists 24 individual pieces of kit which make up the three servers and disk array that you ordered. You would:

A. Identify and check off each piece of kit as you sight it
B. Get someone else to do A
C. Identify that the kit looks like the stuff that the vendor has on their web page
D. Take one look and push the document into the shredder

4. You get a form asking you for an indicative operational budget for the coming five years, incorporating maintenance, depreciation, software licensing and associated consultancy costs per year. You would:

A. Push the document into the shredder
B. Push the document into the shredder
C. Push the document into the shredder
D. Push the document into the shredder

5. There's a server outage and you're called in to see what you can do. On opening the lid you discover that the internals are as foreign to you as geography to GWB. You would:

A. Consult the manual
B. Consult the manual and phone the help line
C. Phone the help line
D. Give it a couple of slaps on the side and say it's probably a loose wire. Then get someone to phone the help line.

6. With new languages coming out daily you find it increasingly hard to keep up. In fact, the last thing you remember programming successfully was:

A. A PHP script
B. A Visual C application
C. A VB script
D. A VCR, by waiting up till the program started and pressing record

7. A colleague is explaining some memory management problem they believe to be the cause of a software fault. While they're explaining it you:

A. Have a mental picture of the memory contents
B. Draw a picture of the memory contents
C. Write down a list of memory update
D. Write down a list of groceries that you need to get

8. Corporate have requested an entirely new application to be run up for a new initiative. In order to purchase the hardware you would:

A. Fire up a test installation, compare it with the prerequisite lists then verify it's functionality and scalability
B. Get a contractor to do A
C. Look at the application recommendations and just use those
D. Shove the request in the shredder and fall back to (B) when they get back to you in a couple of months

9. Looking back over the comments you've made to project proposals in the last six months you find your most common response is:

A. No problems, should take a couple of days
B. No problems, should take a couple of weeks
C. Can you give me a little more information?
D. Does anyone know when the shredder will be fixed?

10. You're at a meeting to discuss the merits of a huge upgrade when you realise that everyone is looking to you for your opinion. Given that you haven't read the documentation you'd:

A. Ask for a couple of minutes to review your notes and skim the documentation to gain an opinion
B. Ask for a couple of minutes to review your notes and look to the executive overview for an opinion
C. Ask for a couple of minutes to review your notes and skim the documents for any glaring anomalies
D. Ask for a couple of minutes to review your documents, then fake a seizure. Then get the shredder fixed.

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