Security

IT support pilot fish takes a call to help a user change a password on a webpage form — and it reminds fish of just how much help-desk techs love password resets.

“I spent 25 minutes talking to him,” fish groans. “There were only two buttons to press, Submit and Reset.

“You’d think that after pressing Reset three times and having it erase the passwords he typed in, he would try Submit — right?

“But no — our customer tried a fourth and then a fifth time, until he got the idea to hit the other button.

“This person was by all accounts a functional, employed adult…”

Sharky needs a new year’s worth of stories of users, management and IT gone off the rails. So send me your true tales of IT life at sharky@computerworld.com. You can also comment on today’s tale at Sharky’s Google+ community, and read thousands of great old tales in the Sharkives.

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Medical rehab facility is facing a compliance deadline for HIPAA privacy regulations, and that could be a problem, says a cybersecurity pilot fish working there.

“The HIPAA regulations are strewn with potential issues,” fish says. “When some aspect isn’t followed and a patient’s data privacy is compromised, the fines can be substantial.”

And that’s the headache fish faces because of his facility’s use of Gmail. As the site’s cybersecurity engineer, fish knows that ordinary Gmail isn’t HIPAA compliant.

Fortunately, there’s a fix — one that involves additional paperwork and agreements, along with some added security verification. But that’s still easier and less complex than moving everyone off Gmail.

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