The penny didn't drop till next weekend. Annette Kingsley had been marveling over his brief description of the Audit course on security, and how thick those people sounded.
"You never know," she mused, "how many computer crimes they'll catch up with, now they know what they're looking for."
Holy shit! he hadn't thought of that. He'd given those four the works, highlighted half the schemes he knew, laid out a six-month recovery project, given them an intro to the tools they needed to really do the job on malfeasance, misconduct and incompetence.
Was that a good idea?
It probably was, he felt. They were human, those people. There was no absolute incorruptible, everyone has his/her pride, and his/her price, but he had to have pushed himself pretty high up their "trusty" list with the last week of Revelations according to Lester.
He felt really good. He wasn't ready for Monday.
"Where the bloody hell have you been?" Fred wanted to know.
"You know bloody well where I've been, you sent me there," he responded immediately in the same grating tone. What the devil was this all about?
"I know where I sent you, but that's where I've been ringing since mid-morning Friday. Why didn't you answer your messages?"
That cunning, conniving old bastard Rosen! He'd cut off the calls to the training group, even messages! Must send him a Thank-You card, the devious SOB, Lester smiled.
"We had a system crash Friday morning, and it might have been some problem with the Creditors run, but it could have come from the area where Chu and McAllister were working. They worked all Sunday on it after the Operations people couldn't recover."
"Chu and McAllister?" Lester was dumbfounded. "Who else? They weren't on their own, were they?"
"You know that's a no-no and I know," Hart started, "and Phil knows, but he's been off sick. Apparently Bill Nicholson didn't know, and he thought it would be good practice for them."
Hart let that sink in for a minute or so. "There must have been some holes in your briefing, Lester. The point is, three days later, what do we do now?"
"Is the System up?" Lester's mind was racing. “Who knows what those two might have done in a weekend of tinkering.”
He and Paul Towner spent the rest of the day, and well into the night, tracing out the sequence of events after the crash. The young fools had not started by saving the contents of the computer’s memory - the only way they'd have a chance of working out what went wrong - so the reason for the crash itself would stay a mystery, for a while at least. Nicholson needed a damned good pummeling, for several very good reasons. Lester started on the Payables program, and found they had validly reconstructed some apparently damaged parts.
They hadn't needed to touch his "doctored" backup tape, and the Operations staff had been unwilling to use it until the situation was clearer. Sound idea, he felt, for more reasons than they knew. Towner, at Lester's suggestion, worked on tracing what the two rookies had been changing in the Operating System. As far as he could tell, they had looked at a lot of places, but only made one change. The alteration didn't really look dangerous, but it didn't seem necessary either, so they agreed to remove it. The Payables program would need to be re-run, tomorrow, and they'd watch it like hawks.
Next morning, they held a heated post-mortem. It wasn't planned that way, but the accumulated errors of judgment practically took over Fred's normal Tuesday review meeting. By this time, the "apprentices" were expected to attend Fred's Tuesday review meeting, that being a normal part of their continuing education on the section's activities and responsibilities. Lester was still hot under the collar, the more so because one of his charges had been a major contributor to the Centre's risk.
Nicholson's weekly report didn't mention the weekend "crash"; time for a little grandstanding, Lester thought grimly.
"Bill," he started sweetly, "guess what happened on Friday?"
"I gathered you were handling that pretty thoroughly, Less," the target answered, wondering what was to come.
"That's because I gathered you bloody well weren't! What the hell were you doing? These blokes were new at that. Intolerable!" Lester groaned.
"Now let's not all commit suicide," Fred soothed, moving to take charge. "Nothing was irreparably lost."
"Yes, Fred, something was! They didn't take a core dump." Lester was in high dudgeon. "There's no further damage done, but we don't know where to start looking for what caused it. The one, single, only essential thing you have to do, and this pair didn't know."
"They did pretty well considering," Bill cut in. "They got the system up, and eventually they brought the database back up. There was three hours of System downtime. They put in a bloody good weekend."
"While you went to the pictures! They got it up DESPITE the lack of supervision. Bill, it's not good enough."
"T's over now," Bill said. "It was almost certainly the Payables program anyway ..."
"That's surmise, Bill," Lester cut in. "Now we've got to stand around and wait, and maybe solve the problem the right way next time it happens, if we’re lucky enough to get a next time. It wasn't a mistake; for Bill Nicholson it was incompetence."
"That's enough, Lester," Fred interrupted sharply." This isn't helping anything. It was a mistake, and while Phil's off sick still, I think Bill had better keep charge of Henry. You've got Rod back in your area. If it happens again, the two can maybe discover some new tricks."
"Not together, they won't," Lester warned. "It's wrong to have the blind leading the blind."
"They won't be alone together again for a while," Fred answered. "You'll be there, and Bill's been told. Can we move on? Paul, you hoped to be finished this Capital Project package evaluation by now, and I haven't seen it mentioned for a couple of weeks."
Lester had a set speech all prepared. He was planning to explain how well he'd run the security course for EDP audit, how grateful they were, how pleased the Audit Manager had been. That idiot Nicko had ruined his good humour, though, and when his turn came he had it all finished in a terse half-minute.
Fred had a memo from the Audit Manager, though, which lengthened the proceedings a little. It was a very good testimonial from the old fox.
"...unanimous vote of thanks from the EDP group..."
"... excellent presentation at very short notice."
"If every week could be as productive..."
Very nice, really, Lester conceded behind his firmly-held gruff exterior. He'd give it a couple of days of petulant stalking around snapping at Nicko, and then he'd ask Fred for a souvenir copy of that memo. Can't have them forgetting this latest screw-up too quickly: it reinforced his own value. He walks away to do another job for a week, and four of them (Fred included) collaborate in a massive, dangerous stuff up. He shouldn't let it be forgotten. All the time he forgave mistakes, and it just got him taken for granted.
* * * *
The Audit Manager was quite willing to extend the "out of reach" period he'd set up for the EDP group's training session. In fact, the section supervisor had the strong impression Mr. Rosen had been expecting the request. The old boy had been quite searching last Friday over the sandwich lunch, about Lester's further value. By that time, however, the computer whiz from Systems Programming had four relatively independent people largely self-sufficient. Even his role of consultant-in-waiting had become mostly redundant. So there wasn't any need, the supervisor assured him, to keep Lester around any longer. They could make any later requests by phone.
There was a lot of work to be done, though, and Rosen clearly expected that. Anyway, he noted, they worked, mostly, on a two-week project cycle, and the EDP group had been excused from the first week's work (during the course) on three separate team projects. The three individuals wouldn't get far with their teams in the second week of the cycle - better they stayed home, to consolidate their discoveries. So how, he asked, should that be done?
Well, the Supervisor started, they were going to strip back a lot of the reporting. They would all take a turn at stopping a lot of the reports they never would or should look at. There were risks of important operator errors and strange occurrences, probably less than one percent of what they were now plotting, that should be brought to attention. They wanted to pull the control surveillance back to a new and more efficient level.
Their tutor had pointed out the aggravation generated by some of their security procedures, and showed how readily some people could avoid some controls. The Super felt he'd like to have a good look at those Policy areas that were obviously in need of review. Could he get access, did the boss think, to an Organisation and Methods expert for a second opinion on some of those points?
"I'll get one here tomorrow," he promised confidently. How long will you want him for - a week, initially?"
Then, too, they'd fallen behind with administration of change requests in some areas. The Super wondered if perhaps that ought to be a separate Security function - Bayliss said a lot of companies handled it that way - but clearly they had to get a crash project under way to catch up.
"Very good thinking," the boss reflected. "Try that suggestion out on your O & M helper. Bear in mind, too, that I'll be pleased to see you out in the field, even as a working supervisor, on an Audit project a bit more than is possible now. That Bayliss boy really got us moving, didn't he?”
“What else?"
The boss complimented his man on the work so far, and set to work to find a really experienced O & M who could participate in an "urgent, high-priority review of certain internal procedures." He called the routine Thank-you” note back before it was typed, intent on making sure Hart out at Mulgrave would stay on their side. Obviously, Hart could do them a power of good, handled properly, in the future. That note had to make him and his man Bayliss proud of some of the achievements they'd set in train.
Wednesday, sooner than Rosen had thought, his young Supervisor Alf James had a bright idea. The word came through that the crash last Friday had been inexpertly managed, and his eyes glistened at the thought of an upset at that moment. His people had found the mess of mysterious records from Friday to Monday - very late Monday, and all they could tell was that it started concurrent with the Accounts Payable run. Something went wrong. Things were awry for a few days. Unskilled people were unsupervised on the weekend. Took them three hours to restore operations, but they stayed working there for another 28 hours. What happened? What about the cheques? Why did...? Why didn't we...? Where was...?
There were a lot of questions that couldn't be handled on the phone, if at all. James had a plan, and he was after Fred Hart's support.
"Look, I know we've had a lot of one of your best men's time, but this crash last weekend seems to be an important opportunity," he began. We'd like to put a team onto investigating how it happened, how it was resolved, and whether there are procedure changes we ought to consider as a result."
Good luck to you all, Fred thought mischievously: if Bayliss and Towner couldn't work out what happened, you're not in the hunt! But instead he asked, "What can I do to help?"
"We'd like Bayliss on that team," James answered. "He's very knowledgeable, our people can understand his language and they respect his judgment. And he wasn't there with you while the crash and recovery were under way. He's competent and independent: but is he available?"
Fred explained that right now he wasn't, but perhaps they could collaborate without too much inconvenience. After all, he'd immediately set Bayliss to do exactly that job, from the Systems Programming group's viewpoint, on his return. The man would, indeed, have covered a lot of pertinent ground, but he had a lot of catch-up work from last week, too. Perhaps they could operate independently, and meet with Bayliss for an hour or two, sometime? Several times, if necessary..?”
Not entirely true, that catch-up bit, but after all, the whole point of the week's training was to make the nuisances in EDP more independent. James wasn't in much of a bargaining position, so he took what was offered with mock gratitude. He'd have two people there tomorrow morning.
"Make it late tomorrow morning," Fred warned. "Bayliss does a lot of night work - we all do - and he isn't usually here until about eleven." He'd brief Lester on reasonable bounds for their group's involvement; no need to make a big thing of their own mistakes. Doubtless the Audit people were more concerned with safeguarding the Company's funds.