Yeah this is believable. Where I worked, in the secured network there were maybe 15 workstations with a maximum of maybe 5 people working at any one time, unless there was a "TOUR" going on. We had 2 contractor and 1 government IT person supporting this network. I asked the one of the contractor ITs when was the last backup. Response: "Do you want me to do a backup of your workstation tonight?" WTF!!! I am no IT slob…
Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
61–70 of 100 posts
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would consider it progress. The only data loss to Google that I was able to find was [0], where a single datacenter was hit by lightning 4 times in short succession, and 0.000001% of disk space in said datacenter was lost. And only because the lost data consisted of recent writes that had yet to be backed up. And only because the lightning affected the AUX power systems in a way that they have since committed to fi…
The only thing between your data and /dev/null in a cloud data center is a vacation and expired credit card.
Thank goodness storage is cheap. I've had a revolving door of credit/debit card numbers over the last few years thanks to identity theft, and the SaaS providers I use for personal stuff are really good about keeping my data around even after invalid credit-card auto-pay cycles fail.
For more serious data, I have to imagine that SLAs generally define data retention periods even after exiting the agreement, right? (I legitimately don't know)
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, such ideas would create an atmosphere of fear and increase cover-ups, rather than solve problems. There needs to be a solution that acknowledges the inevitably of mistakes and still deals with the issue.
Exactly this. How many of us would be up in arms if developers were fired for making mistakes? You just need to look at all the stories around rm -rf...
so what if tomorrow your bank says it has lost all records due to programming/tech error? who is responsible there? why is such sensitive data (air force etc) should be treated differently than cash/finance data?
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#64There has been too much recently of government agencies losing data due to "crashes" or "inadvertent" deletions. For example the IRS, state department, and now the Air Force. A really easy way to fix this is to make a law so that if government data such as this gets lost, then the cabinet level person responsible for overseeing the agency immediately loses their cabinet level position and is barred from further work…
This idea is too simplistic. Although I used to support it. I've changed my position from yours to 'retrained and demotion' position. Since people make mistakes, I think being 'barred from further work' is counter-productive and the government would lose out on many able and competent workers. Heck, this idea could also be exploited by lower-level workers due to not liking their higher-up bosses; i.e. a lower-level w…
If you have backup, a crash won't lose months of data. I'm ok to lose a so called "competent worker" if he/she hasn't been doing something as simple as off-site backup.
It's local data corruption here. At worst you loose the data since the last backup.
Now, in the army, they have redundancy procedures for everything, and you want to make us believe the one server used to keep them in check, not only had crash beyong repair, but has no backup ?
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#65There has been too much recently of government agencies losing data due to "crashes" or "inadvertent" deletions. For example the IRS, state department, and now the Air Force. A really easy way to fix this is to make a law so that if government data such as this gets lost, then the cabinet level person responsible for overseeing the agency immediately loses their cabinet level position and is barred from further work…
Imagine what would happen in the industry if every time someone screwed up like that they got fired. Just like that, without any option given to explain what happened, how they tried everything they could from stopping it and so on.
Ah, I know it's the way it is in some organisations, sure. But is it a good way to handle people screwing up? People always screw up. If you start firing them for screwing up you end up with a pool of inexperienced workers who keep screwing up in the same way. If you keep them around, they learn and never screw up in the same way again.
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#66Just ask the Russians for a backup. And if that fails, the next-higher authority: the NSA.
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#67There has been too much recently of government agencies losing data due to "crashes" or "inadvertent" deletions. For example the IRS, state department, and now the Air Force. A really easy way to fix this is to make a law so that if government data such as this gets lost, then the cabinet level person responsible for overseeing the agency immediately loses their cabinet level position and is barred from further work…
Imagine what would happen in the industry if every time someone screwed up like that they got fired. Just like that, without any option given to explain what happened, how they tried everything they could from stopping it and so on. Ah, I know it's the way it is in some organisations, sure. But is it a good way to handle people screwing up? People always screw up. If you start firing them for screwing up you end up w…
there is screwing up and screwing up. one - you do all you could, act proactively, educate yourself, but forces beyond your control prevent you from reaching optimal state and massive clusterfk happens. I would keep this one.
then you have ignorants, that in 2016 will not even think that mission-critical system should have SOME backup, off-site. people that will put amazing amount of energy into little political games, backstabbing, or just plain old incompetent lazy ones. those should become exemplary cases.
investigation should sort out which is which, but most will fall on either side of spectrum. usually it's really not that hard.
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, forgive me if I'm too cynical, but Hanlon's razor fails when this sort of thing involves criminal investigations of government employees. Edit: it also inspired a variation on an old joke about how the same word means different things to different people. For example, suppose the order goes out to "secure the data center." Marines report back, "We have destroyed the data center." Army reports, "We have killed e…
> Yeah, forgive me if I'm too cynical, but Hanlon's razor fails when this sort of thing involves criminal investigations of government employees. I've had this thought before. Can you think of a general, defensible clause to add to Hanlon's razor to account for this?
"There is no point in trying to distinguish incompetence from malice when it directly benefits the party committing the error."
You need to treat it all as malice.
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#69There has been too much recently of government agencies losing data due to "crashes" or "inadvertent" deletions. For example the IRS, state department, and now the Air Force. A really easy way to fix this is to make a law so that if government data such as this gets lost, then the cabinet level person responsible for overseeing the agency immediately loses their cabinet level position and is barred from further work…
"Neither the Air Force nor Lockheed Martin, the defense firm that runs the database, could say why it became corrupted or whether they’ll be able to recover the information."
Incumbent trusts local IT manager and local IT manager has contract with external company.
The question becomes: "Did the contract with Lockheed Martin cover any form of regular backup and additionally some form of long term open format archiving?"
Perhaps some checklists or standards that all long term record keeping systems need to comply with would be good.
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, forgive me if I'm too cynical, but Hanlon's razor fails when this sort of thing involves criminal investigations of government employees. Edit: it also inspired a variation on an old joke about how the same word means different things to different people. For example, suppose the order goes out to "secure the data center." Marines report back, "We have destroyed the data center." Army reports, "We have killed e…
> Yeah, forgive me if I'm too cynical, but Hanlon's razor fails when this sort of thing involves criminal investigations of government employees. I've had this thought before. Can you think of a general, defensible clause to add to Hanlon's razor to account for this?
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by carelessness."
Unless that malice is aimed at keeping an individual out of trouble rather than harming others.