Don't give employees excuses to call it a day [Dilbert]
Tuesday, August 25th 2009 @ 6:34 AM (not yet rated)
Do you ever wonder if members of your team would take any easy excuse to avoid work? Maybe you know they would. Of course, it depends on your organization's culture, but I've seen a few places where a flicker of lights causes systems to all crash at the same time.
Next thing you know, surprise... "There's something wrong with the network - it's not coming back up properly. Oh well, better take my lunch early while they get it fixed.."
Whether it's flakey software or unexpected outages due to power failures or virus infections, these excuses can be real productivity problem for some places.
The best formal cure I know for this is to have a good Business Continuity Plan, with an Incident Response protocol that has the power to feed back their observations to an engaged management team. This way, they can correct these kinds of vulnerabilities to system availability, and therefore productivity - especially in the kind of place that breeds adversity between staff and management.
The best informal cure? Try to build understanding and trust within the workforce, that inspires people to stay productive - even through a rough day.
When I worked at McDonalds, cooking hamburgers as a teenager, they had a slogan you learned on the first day of orientation to infuse a productivity mindset. I don't know if they still use it today - "If there's time to lean, there's time to clean!"
The point is, there's always something a motivated team member can do without a computer to be productive. Don't give them an excuse to disengage every time.
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Scott Wright
The Streetwise Security Coach
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On the net, be careful bragging about security wins
Sunday, August 23rd 2009 @ 9:33 PM (not yet rated)
One of the hardest things for me to find is success stories about security. But there's often a good reason for people's reluctance to speak out about what practices work well.
Click HERE for a good example of how this phenomenon plays out in reality for a police force in Australia that was battling a group of hackers. On the surface, it seems like an amusing story, where the police claimed victory a bit prematurely, and let their guard down far enough for the ring of hackers they infiltrated to retaliate in greater measure. But if they'd kept quiet about it, they might have fared better, and not looked so silly.
As soon as you start talking about how good you are at something, especially on the Internet, you become a target. Furthermore, if you are an institution that already has enemies - like the police in the story above - you are literally asking for trouble.
Another aspect of the "security success story phenomenon" is that responsible organizations catch wind of these kind of unfortunate incidents and become very reluctant to talk in public about their security measures and successes.
It's a bit like the airline industry where, even though Qantas may have the best reputation for safety, they don't dare try to use that as an overt marketing tactic. Or, it's like saying the Titanic is unsinkable (although there's some debate over whom that remark provoked into putting an iceberg in the way of the ship).
It's easy to understand why people don't want to talk about how their security failed after an incident, but unless you are responsible for protecting a business operation, you don't know how close you are to failure on any given day - even with the best of practices.
Up until September 11, 2001, the US Government could have claimed that it's domestic anti-terrorism efforts were fairly successful, too.
So, despite the fact that it would be really helpful in the grand scheme of things to share tips on what security practices have worked for you, I'll understand if you don't want to identify yourself. So, feel free to register in The Streetwise Security Zone with an anonymous username and a hotmail account. We'd really appreciate it, but don't toot your own identifiable horn too loudly. Or somebody might try to make you eat your own words.
| Share | My live security awareness webinars are a quick and affordable way to provide your entire staff with professional quality security awareness training and education - whether it's general training or for specific teams or industries. I offer group rates and can tailor content to your specific needs. Please call or email me at the coordinates below, or CLICK HERE to see my training webinar catalog.
Scott Wright
The Streetwise Security Coach
Join the Streetwise Security Zone at:
http://www.streetwise-security-zone.com/join.html
Phone: 1-613-693-0997
Email: scott@streetwise-security-zone.com
Twitter ID: http://www.twitter.com/streetsec
To receive weekly security tips and other notices about helpful content available on this site, please make sure you are on my list by clicking HERE, and entering your name and email address.
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