- God and the Network Administrator
- Can You Trust Yourself?
- Suggestions for Civility
- Revenge of the Nerds
- Oath of an Admin
- The Golden Rule
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Suggestions for Civility
So what's a mean nerd to do? How about a little restraint for starters? Next, bring it your level of power to management's attention. That's right—by sharing with management what you can do, there's a heightened sense of responsibility. This also spurs you to document your access, permissions, and admin duties to protect your career.
Next, create proper security. Admins should be able to set permissions, but not access resources. Yeah, yeah...you're the admin and can do whatever the hell you want, but try playing by some common rules.
Implement auditing. This can be done electronically to prove who's accessed what and when they accessed it. This not only creates a system of checks and balances, but also can protect the admin from being accused of accessing sensitive data.
If there's more than one network admin in your environment, are you both using the same account to administer the network? You are? Gasp! If all admins are using the same account to administer, how can auditing be effective? How can there be accountability?
Each admin should have their own administrative account to use only when it's time for admin duties. In other words, Susan's not logged on as an administrator while writing a report in Microsoft Word.
Network administrators should not, must not, know the password of users. If you know the password of users, you should be held accountable for the activities users do on your network.