This morning I had an annoying phone conversation with a customer. They're a big corporate and so tend to generate a lot of "box ticking" so that everyone in the chain can cover their asses if something goes wrong. Actually a lot of is probably just justifying their own job. Anway... their IT manager rings me up and says they've done a security audit of the server we provide them. The audit detected that we allow several weak ciphers to be used when negotiating a TLS connection. The IT guys launches in to this patronising speech about how embarrassing it is that he has to bring this to our attention since we're supposed to be the experts and on top of these things. Then he starts waffling about us failing in our legal responsibilities under the GDPR and all sort of other rubbish. I held my tongue and said that if it was a problem we'd be happy to update the TLS configuration for their server to have a white list of agreed ciphers. He then starts on about how concerned he is for our other customers who also probably "vulnerable as we speak" and that he hopes we will be contacting all of the affected to sort out this serious problem.
I managed to eventually get the guy off the phone. Now I don't have a problem with people doing security audits of our stuff. I don't have a problem with people phoning up and asking for changes to be made. But my god does it wind me up when IT managers start acting like every minor fault they find is some kind of serious cause for concern that means we all need to run around like the sky is falling. It makes me just want to quit and walk off in to the woods... speaking of which
I watched the film Charisma by Kiyoshi Kurosawa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charisma_(film) last night. I've been a fan of Kurosawa since I saw Kairo and Cure. Something about the tone of his work just speaks to that depressive part of my brain. Charisma was no exception. The film takes place almost entirely in a dying wood full of a abandoned buildings. It was cold and lonely but also in some ways comforting. The protagonist reminded my heavily of those times in my life when I've just wanted to stop being me and go start again somewhere else. And after the hassles of today maybe that's what I'll do, or more likely I'll lay on the sofa and gaze listlessly out of the window.
One of those days
This morning I had an annoying phone conversation with a customer. They're a big corporate and so tend to generate a lot of "box ticking" so that everyone in the chain can cover their asses if something goes wrong. Actually a lot of is probably just justifying their own job. Anway... their IT manager rings me up and says they've done a security audit of the server we provide them. The audit detected that we allow several weak ciphers to be used when negotiating a TLS connection. The IT guys launches in to this patronising speech about how embarrassing it is that he has to bring this to our attention since we're supposed to be the experts and on top of these things. Then he starts waffling about us failing in our legal responsibilities under the GDPR and all sort of other rubbish. I held my tongue and said that if it was a problem we'd be happy to update the TLS configuration for their server to have a white list of agreed ciphers. He then starts on about how concerned he is for our other customers who also probably "vulnerable as we speak" and that he hopes we will be contacting all of the affected to sort out this serious problem.
I managed to eventually get the guy off the phone. Now I don't have a problem with people doing security audits of our stuff. I don't have a problem with people phoning up and asking for changes to be made. But my god does it wind me up when IT managers start acting like every minor fault they find is some kind of serious cause for concern that means we all need to run around like the sky is falling. It makes me just want to quit and walk off in to the woods... speaking of which
I watched the film Charisma by Kiyoshi Kurosawa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charisma_(film) last night. I've been a fan of Kurosawa since I saw Kairo and Cure. Something about the tone of his work just speaks to that depressive part of my brain. Charisma was no exception. The film takes place almost entirely in a dying wood full of a abandoned buildings. It was cold and lonely but also in some ways comforting. The protagonist reminded my heavily of those times in my life when I've just wanted to stop being me and go start again somewhere else. And after the hassles of today maybe that's what I'll do, or more likely I'll lay on the sofa and gaze listlessly out of the window.
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