VCU - Technology Services

The lead network engineer for the city of San Francisco was arrested a week ago and charged with 4 counts of computer tampering. He is being held on $5 million bail for refusing to hand over the administrative password to the WAN, FiberWAN, which carried more than 60% of the city government traffic. Yes, $5 million. As of today he still hasn't handed it over. The password is needed to make changes to the configuration of network equipment like routers and switches.

This is a fascinating story. He's being accused of all sorts of behavior - facilitating remote network access so confidential data could be destroyed, covertly reading coworkers emails, and taking pictures of the female head of security during a password audit. However it seems that there's a lot more to this story.

There are some key lessons.

1. Ensure that at least 2 people have access to all administrative passwords.

2. Backup all system configuration files on a regular basis to storage media with restricted access.

3. Ensure that at least 2 people can perform every business function.

4. Document all systems and processes.

5. Establish a written information security policy.