Posted on 09/15/2017 12:49:39 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
When Congress hauls in Equifax CEO Richard Smith to grill him, it can start by asking why he put someone with degrees in music in charge of the company’s data security.
And then they might also ask him if anyone at the company has been involved in efforts to cover up Susan Mauldin’s lack of educational qualifications since the data breach became public.
It would be fascinating to hear Smith try to explain both of those extraordinary items.
If those events don’t put the final nails in his professional coffin, accountability in the U.S. is officially dead.
Equifax “Chief Security Officer” Susan Mauldin has a bachelor’s degree and a master of fine arts degree in music composition from the University of Georgia. Her LinkedIn professional profile lists no education related to technology or security.
This is the person who was in charge of keeping your personal and financial data safe — and whose apparent failings have put 143 million of us at risk from identity theft and fraud. It was revealed this week that the massive data breach came due to a software vulnerability that was known about, and should have been patched, months earlier.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Exactly!
I was getting ready to type the same.
If the high level boss is still coding and/or getting into the nuts and bolts of systems, they’re not ready to be the overall boss.
You have people who do that.
This woman looks a bit like Nurse Ratched...
I wouldn’t expect a music major to be a world-class manager for a department involving security issues for 200 million citizens, and it would appear that this Equifax situation bears that theory out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Baxter
I don’t consult on missile defense or anything like that but I never finished college and have been in IT for more than 20 years and very successful.
Half the best people in the industry have English and other non relevant degrees if a degree at all.
You must have done quite a bit of Chopin’ around to find that image!
Well as you may know, some music majors cant hit a note without sheet music in front of them. :-)
Some believe that for diversity, he had to hire a Dyke
dfwgator always has a Handel on images.
Indeed.
Especially when they are so good at Haydn on the Internet.
Admin/admin is the second most common default out of the box login for IT equipment after admin/password. There are a *lot* of people too stupid to realize you’re supposed to change it.
Looked at her work with Hewlett Packard where she spent several years, then Suntrust....
According to reports, the breach occurred because of failure to patch a system. That is a simple IT function that failed or was overlooked. I suspect some sort of staffing change at the system admin is the direct cause. Incompetence is also a likely candidate as well. The Sony hack a few years ago happened during the transition from in house IT to and outsource firm.
VERY, VERY good!! Thanks for the morning laugh.
With whom?
I have it on good authority that the rumor is true, at least for many foreign access accounts.
These accounts could, of course, access any US domestic data...
I did not find a Susan Mauldin in wikipedia but here are some outside observations based on generalities.
1. According to a web search, Mauldin was hired at HP in 2002. This was during the height of gender based political correctness at HP, with none other than Carly Fiorina at the helm of HP as CEO (1999-2004). Fiorina was the symptom of a much larger problem at HP, which is that gender based polititcal correctness replaced the HP Way during the era of previous HP CEOs (most notably, Fiorina’s predecessor CEOs at HP who had been responsible for hiring her there). Therefore, anyone who was hired or promoted during this period at HP might benefit from a second look.
2. software management is unlike management of almost anything else. this is because software is usually very opaque to someone who is not very technical and not very intimate with the software. In particular, it requires logic of a very high order form in addition to the usual conventional management skills. In more recent years, ISO 9000 has helped, but it is not always a panacea. Often, managing a software product or group of products is like managing a ticking time bomb of problems that have been swept under the rug by previous managers.
3. Diversity hires tend to have one thing in common— incompetence at whatever they are hired to do. A tech diversity hire is often lousy at tech. A management diversity hire is often lousy at management. Once in, they must either be called out as incompetent, encouraged to resign and find another job outside the company, or get promoted. Promotions of diversity hires happen more often than one would expect. It tends to demoralize everyone working under the diversity hire minager. The essence of the failure is that the employee narrative changes from “how can we best keep the customer satisfied according to the company’s value proposition” to “how can i protect myself from the next management screw-up until i can find another job outside the scope of authority of this manager.” This is fatal to the company objectives because employees are no longer working towards the value proposition in unity. They are working to toss problems over the fence to other employees. This is because the diversity management hire is too incompetent to tell the difference between solving a problem and masking the problem by moving it somewhere else, patching it with a temporary workaround, etc.
4. diversity hires tend to be intimidated by competent co workers. So letting a diversity hire in pollutes the entire organization one way or another. When a diversity hire decision conflicts with a competent employee decision, something happens. Eventually either the diversity hire stays or leaves. Any outcome that results in the diversity hire staying is ultimately bad for the organization. If not corrected, eventually the organization fails because the competent people have already left or are “retired in place.” Along the way there will be much toxic internal discord in the organization.
5. not every diversity hire is incompetent. however, being able to discern the difference, and then acting on that information to make work related decisions can be very toxic to one’s career.
6. software management remains, to this day, a challenge. however, that is for another time, since my computer has just notified me that it requires a reboot to install important updates. :-)
It appears we have two now.
for comparison purposes only, here is a partial bio of former UA airline security exec Ed Soliday:
https://www.indianahouserepublicans.com/members/leadership/ed-soliday
Representative Soliday was employed by United Airlines for over 35 years as a pilot, Human Factors Instructor, Flight Manager, and Senior Staff Executive, serving the last eleven as Vice President of Safety, Quality Assurance and Security, responsible for Flight Safety, Aircraft Cabin Safety, Occupational Safety, Environmental Compliance, Operational Quality Assurance, Security, Computer Security and Emergency Response. Captain Soliday was responsible for crisis management during 9/11 at United. During his career Captain Soliday flew the DC-6, DC-8, Boeing 727, Boeing 737-200, -300, -500, the Boeing 767-200, BOEING 767-300 and Boeing 757-200, logging over 14,000 hours of flight time.
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