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Management practices will determine what you can do and how you do it. This is true both for avoiding problems and for dealing with problems that cant be avoided. The remainder of this chapter
reviews some of the more important management issues.
1.3.2.1 Professionalism
To effectively administer a system requires a high degree of professionalism. This includes personal honesty and ethical behavior. You should learn to evaluate yourself in an honest, objective manner.
See The Peter Principle Revisited
. It also requires that you conform to the organizations mission and culture. Your network serves some higher purpose within your organization. It does not exist strictly
for your benefit. You should manage the network with this in mind. This means that everything you do should be done from the perspective of a cost-benefit trade-off. It is too easy to get caught in the
trap of doing something the right way at a higher cost than the benefits justify. Performance analysis is the key element.
The organizations mind-set or culture will have a tremendous impact on how you approach problems in general and the use of tools in particular. It will determine which tools you can use, how you can
use the tools, and, most important, what you can do with the information you obtain. Within organizations, there is often a battle between openness and secrecy. The secrecy advocate believes that
details of the network should be available only on a need-to-know basis, if then. She believes, not without justification, that this enhances security. The openness advocate believes that the details of a
system should be open and available. This allows users to adapt and make optimal use of the system and provides a review process, giving users more input into the operation of the network.
Taken to an extreme, the secrecy advocate will suppress information that is needed by the user, making a system or network virtually unusable. Openness, taken to an extreme, will leave a network
vulnerable to attack. Most peoples views fall somewhere between these two extremes but often favor one position over the other. I advocate prudent openness. In most situations, it makes no sense to shut
down a system because it might be attacked. And it is asinine not to provide users with the information they need to protect themselves. Openness among those responsible for the different systems within an
organization is absolutely essential.
1.3.2.2 Ego management
We would all like to think that we are irreplaceable, and that no one else could do our jobs as well as we do. This is human nature. Unfortunately, some people take steps to make sure this is true. The
most obvious way an administrator may do this is hide what he actually does and how his system works.
This can be done many ways. Failing to document the system is one approach—leaving comments out of code or configuration files is common. The goal of such an administrator is to make sure he is the
only one who truly understands the system. He may try to limit others access to a system by restricting accounts or access to passwords. This can be done to hide other types of unprofessional activities as
well. If an administrator occasionally reads other users email, he may not want anyone else to have standard accounts on the email server. If he is overspending on equipment to gain experience with
new technologies, he will not want any technically literate people knowing what equipment he is buying.
This behavior is usually well disguised, but it is extremely common. For example, a technician may insist on doing tasks that users could or should be doing. The problem is that this keeps users
dependent on the technician when it isnt necessary. This can seem very helpful or friendly on the
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surface. But, if you repeatedly ask for details and dont get them, there may be more to it than meets the eye.
Common justifications are security and privacy. Unless you are in a management position, there is often little you can do other than accept the explanations given. But if you are in a management
position, are technically competent, and still hear these excuses from your employees, beware You have a serious problem.
No one knows everything. Whenever information is suppressed, you lose input from individuals who dont have the information. If an employee cant control her ego, she should not be turned loose on
your network with the tools described in this book. She will not share what she learns. She will only use it to further entrench herself.
The problem is basically a personnel problem and must be dealt with as such. Individuals in technical areas seem particularly prone to these problems. It may stem from enlarged egos or from insecurity.
Many people are drawn to technical areas as a way to seem special. Alternately, an administrator may see information as a source of power or even a weapon. He may feel that if he shares the information,
he will lose his leverage. Often individuals may not even recognize the behavior in themselves. It is just the way they have always done things and it is the way that feels right.
If you are a manager, you should deal with this problem immediately. If you cant correct the problem in short order, you should probably replace the employee. An irreplaceable employee today will be
even more irreplaceable tomorrow. Sooner or later, everyone leaves—finds a better job, retires, or runs off to Poughkeepsie with an exotic dancer. In the meantime, such a person only becomes more
entrenched making the eventual departure more painful. It will be better to deal with the problem now rather than later.
1.3.2.3 Legal and ethical considerations
