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Oct 13Gone Phishing
by in Feature Articles on 2013-11-29Juan's job wouldn't have been so bad if not for the rampart stupidity. Stupidity was responsible for deciding a 25k+ employee corporation only needed a skeleton-crewed IT department. And that same level of stupidity was spreading across the entire C-level of the org chart.
The IT office, such as it was-- a single converted room in the basement-- was its usual sparsely populated self, made up of just Juan, and his few remaining coworkers. Everyone else had either been caught by the last swing of the budget axe, or had seen it coming and had bailed. The team that remained was a tight mix of competent enough to be seen as valuable; hard-working enough to be taken advantage enough; and skilled enough to leave, but too lazy to do so.
Like a ninja in the night, Hanz M., AKA Hanzo, stalks across Hesse University’s Dresden campus. The go-to man in the IT department, he fixes the messes that others leave behind. This is one of his stories.
Years ago, Movietech Solutions created ticketing and management software for movie theatres. The DOS version of their flagship app had been quite popular with smaller and mid-sized chains throughout North America for years, so it was no surprise that when the Windows 95 version was announced - with its integration with front-line touch screens, self-service kiosks, and boatloads of management reporting - that it was quickly adopted. For the most part, the upgrades happened without issue. New hardware would be ordered and installed by a local IT person, data migrated and business carried on as usual. Except for when it didn't. When this happened, corporate sent out James. A.K.A. 'The Cleaner'.