Who the f*&^ are you?

After I explained to someone that I worked in Information Security, they commented, “well there’s not much you guys do given all the hacking that’s gone on lately.”

Deep breath. Control pulse. Be calm.

I could have just explained how a lot of the so-called hacking attacks were actually DDOS. Or the fact that human error was responsible for a lot. But my mind wandered to a few things.

*flashback*

Last winter my boiler stopped working, so I had no hot water or heating. With temperatures not going far above zero degree’s I was glad I had emergency home cover provided by NatWest bank… unfortunately due to their sheer incompetence (a long story) I still had no hot water or heating despite promises and engineer visits. Eventually I got a private engineer in who fixed it all and saved my kids from hypothermia.

Not too long ago, I returned home with my family to find our house had been broken into. Jewellery and other valuables had been taken and the whole house turned upside down.

The police couldn’t do much beyond provide a crime reference number and closed the investigation a week later.

On the other hand, a couple of months on and the insurance company (NatWest surprisingly) are still conducting their investigation to try and determine how little was taken so they can compensate me with a McDonalds voucher. In essence, the thieves have robbed me and now NatWest is doing its best to rob me too.

When you look at the recent news columns dedicated to the News of the World phone hacking scandal, you begin to see not only the depths to which the media sink to in order to get a bit of tabloid gossip, but also how incompetent the police are in actually stopping any crime whatsoever. Unless you happen to be a driver who is stopped doing 33mph in a 30mph zone at midnight… just think of the kids you could have killed driving like that you irresponsible person!

You go to Doctors and they are just as incompetent. Firstly, they have never done any research into medical conditions themselves or the effects of medication. They leave that to pharmaceutical companies to sort out. They just end up trying to match symptoms to a drug. Knowing full well that hardly any of their medication actually cures and will only serve to block the pain or provide temporary relief. For example, if you’ve got a headache, a painkiller will suppress the pain without actually fixing the root cause (ask anyone who suffers from migraines). Alternatively, if you’re diabetic, they’ll get you on insulin which you then have to inject daily for the rest of your life. It doesn’t cure the root cause and surprise surprise only puts more money in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies who do all the so called research to start with.

*back to original conversation*

So I responded, “I work in an industry with people who have more talent in one finger than you have in your entire existence. A place where hundreds of thousands of websites take payment online without being hacked, where billions of records are stored in databases which are secured by people like me. Where investigators actually trawl through logs line by line to piece together where things went wrong to prevent them happening again. We don’t give up like the police because we can’t be bothered. We don’t put in temporary fixes like doctors to keep you dependant upon us unnecessarily and we certainly don’t provide you with a false sense of security like insurance companies. We’re the people who do our jobs – who the f*&^ are you?”