Survey Says...
We are a distance learning company, and every so often one of the larger potential clients sends in a security survey that we have to fill out to move forward with with negotiations.
I've been the MIS Director for the five years that we've been doing online education. In that time We've gotten about a dozen of these surveys. I've filled them out and we've gotten the business of all of them. 100% success rate.
The company grew and a few new layers of management were added above me. A new survey comes in. 12 pages long, and not what I would consider a challenge. Management decides to take care of the
survey themselves, and I only end up answering about six questions because no one else can figure them out.
I got a glance at the final answers just before they were sent out. A page and a half of the survey is on cookies, and whoever wrote the questions knew exactly what they were talking about.
The answer management gave to the first question on cookies is a two paragraph explanation of "What are cookies?" copied and pasted from our ISP's web site. It's the most technical answer on the survey, and the rest of the answers go downhill from there, as my answers were edited into oblivion.
Needless to say, I doubt we're going to get the contract.
And the reason I got to see the final answers? My manger wanted to find a way to claim user names are encrypted in the database when they're stored as clear text.
I've been the MIS Director for the five years that we've been doing online education. In that time We've gotten about a dozen of these surveys. I've filled them out and we've gotten the business of all of them. 100% success rate.
The company grew and a few new layers of management were added above me. A new survey comes in. 12 pages long, and not what I would consider a challenge. Management decides to take care of the
survey themselves, and I only end up answering about six questions because no one else can figure them out.
I got a glance at the final answers just before they were sent out. A page and a half of the survey is on cookies, and whoever wrote the questions knew exactly what they were talking about.
The answer management gave to the first question on cookies is a two paragraph explanation of "What are cookies?" copied and pasted from our ISP's web site. It's the most technical answer on the survey, and the rest of the answers go downhill from there, as my answers were edited into oblivion.
Needless to say, I doubt we're going to get the contract.
And the reason I got to see the final answers? My manger wanted to find a way to claim user names are encrypted in the database when they're stored as clear text.