North American Network Operators Group
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Re: ISPs' willingness to take action

  • From: Joe Abley
  • Date: Mon Oct 27 10:59:42 2003 
On 27 Oct 2003, at 10:25, Sean Donelan wrote:


Most ISPs are relatively secure.  Yes, occasionally a backbone
router shows up on some list with a password of "cisco."  The major
problems are in the systems managed and installed on non-ISP networks
(i.e. end-users).
Maybe all the ISPs I've been involved with in the past ten years have been exceptions, but there are only a small handful of them that I would elevate to the status of "relatively secure".

Really? Most users are angry when their network connection is interrupted
for any reason, including their own mistakes.
Every now and then some acquaintance or relative hauls me in my capacity as unpaid "computer expert", so that I can stare bemusedly at their windows problem and mutter things like "buy a mac" under my breath.

My experience every time is that end users are amazingly tolerant of breakage. The fact that there are popups all over the screen, or that it takes five minutes to open their mail client, or that machines freeze up every ten minutes and require a hard boot appear to be simply accommodated as "that's what computers do".

As a non-ISP consultant, when a client asks you to configure their
Exchange server do you always conduct a top-to-bottom security analysis of
the client's entire business infrastructure and refuse to do business with
them until after they have corrected every deficiency? Or does the client
just say screw you, and hires a different consultant that will do what
the client wants?
When I was a consultant, I was never sufficiently mercenary to ask for money in return for what I *knew* to be bad advice. I'd far rather they buy their bad advice elsewhere.


Joe