January 22, 2013

The Security Consultant Looses his Book

Category: Articles — admin @ 9:36 pm

In the late 70’s I was acting Regional Sales Manager for a major West Coast computer organization. It was the hope and desire of the founder of the company to make his company the next IBM. While he tried to institute many of the idiosyncrasies of the IBM organization, it was obvious that his company was unique and had been successful without trying to be the next IBM. When he found out IBM had a training program he was quick to institute a training program of his own.

One program in particular that caused more that a few comments from the troops was the program he instituted on company security. He brought in a consultant who had recently published a book on company security. It was obvious after listening to this individual speak, he thought he was the end-all to security! He did not speak to you, he spoke down to you, and that annoyed almost everyone in the audience. He wanted to show how right he was and took the group on a walking tour of the production area.

Besides interrupting the flow of work going out the door, he proceeded to turn over keyboards, or to lift the blotter and looked for the passwords to the computers. In many cases he was successful, but he didn’t stop at finding fault. He referred to the people with very disparaging names and criticized everyone associated with the area from the VP General Manager down to the lowest clerk working on the production floor. When he found some discrepancy, he would hold up his book and say, “See its all here, everything you need to know about security and what not to do.” When the consultant would find what he considered a security problem, he would put down his book and parade around with the guilty non-secure item in his hand, saying to all that were able to hear him, “See, another person who has no regard for the security of this organization!” After listening to him for close to an hour on his investigative journey, it got a little old, besides being insulting.

It got to be so annoying after a while, besides taking most of the sales people away from following up on their clients, so I decided to do something about it. While the security consultant was going through another tirade regarding uncovering another keyboard with a password attached, I took his book and put it into one of the large computer cabinets that was being packed ready to be shipped out the door.

When the consultant came back, to return the keyboard where he had found it, he went looking for his book, and it was no where to be found. The consultant started searching high and low, looking in all of the desks near by, and even in some of the garbage containers. The company person leading the group asked the consultant what seemed to be the problem, and he answered, “Either I misplaced my book, but I think more than likely someone stole it!” The company person being concerned that he would catch heat from the Founder requested that everyone in the group if they have a brief case to open it so that he can inspect it. Being a typical New Yorker, I complained that I was being treated like a criminal and the consultant should apologize to all the members of this group. After all, we should not be blamed for his carelessness.

That evening, at the bar, in the hotel, where I was staying having a drink, I had more people wanting to buy me drinks for putting this pompous consultant in his place.

A week later the sales force was notified that a major client was very pleased to receive a book on security and sent a thank you note to the Founder. To this day neither the consultant nor the founder of the company figured out how the book ended up being shipped to this client.

The morale of this story? “When you are in sales, you have no time to waste, and you must improvise when necessary to get back to your clients and making money”

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