According to tonight's news, they didn't need to see the records, and after a previous occasion when they'd been sent the entire dataset on CD, NAO had asked them to only send the data that needed to be checked, not all of it.
Apparently SELECT fieldname, fieldname, fieldname was too expensive, when you could just SELECT *...
The whole thing is somehow boggling, yet utterly predictable...
It's just a bunch of civil servants who are a bit (lot) out of their depth, but now less dangerous for that.
If one does need to physically transfer that amount of highly sensitive data you physically walk / drive / fly it to where it needs to go. But what is wrong with remote access? Get your server / database to talk to my server / database. We know it's not that difficult, but I suspect that their IT systems are so wrapped up in protection, isolated from the rest of the world (rest of reality) that no friendly system can talk to another one.
I bet these are people who insist on 15 character passwords with lower case, UPPER CASE, 999, and $&^^%@!$ that change every 30 days which nobody can remember and everybody writes down. *shakes head*
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 09:20 pm (UTC)Apparently SELECT fieldname, fieldname, fieldname was too expensive, when you could just SELECT *...
The whole thing is somehow boggling, yet utterly predictable...
no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 11:02 pm (UTC)If one does need to physically transfer that amount of highly sensitive data you physically walk / drive / fly it to where it needs to go. But what is wrong with remote access? Get your server / database to talk to my server / database. We know it's not that difficult, but I suspect that their IT systems are so wrapped up in protection, isolated from the rest of the world (rest of reality) that no friendly system can talk to another one.
I bet these are people who insist on 15 character passwords with lower case, UPPER CASE, 999, and $&^^%@!$ that change every 30 days which nobody can remember and everybody writes down. *shakes head*
no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 11:09 pm (UTC)It makes me think of the joke about the countryman giving directions :
"well, if I was going where you're going, I wouldn't be starting from here!"