The longer I work in the security field the more I have come to realize that this is true!

A co-worker emailed me a few days ago a name of a fellow I worked with a few years ago. I worked with him at a crazy startup which was more like a bad Dilbert cartoon than a company. With the 'Mistakes and Myths' trend that has been posted over the last few weeks, it allowed me to reminisce over the last 10 years of my career and my conclusion was that working for IT/Security is a too often a Dilbert cartoon.

At this old job of mine, we the developers sat in an open area sealed by a door and large window. The window was about 4 feet by 2 feet. As we found Dilbert cartoons that applied to our job, we would write names of people we worked with beside the characters and tape them to the window. We started taping cartoons to the bottom of the window with the cartoon facing in and the white paper facing out. As we found more cartoons we would stack them up the window. The developers, when coding would look to the door when business/management/marketing would show up and peer through the glass at the geeks, we where almost like zoo animals when the execs would give their dog and pony tours.

Well, over time the window got full of white paper and the “others” finally came in the development section to look at the “artwork” and noticed to their horror all their names were inked by the Dilbert management characters. We thought it was funny....

I tell this story because as more Dilbert events happen between the security folks and management the more of a divide it creates. This divide is not healthy as it ends up reflecting in the security state of your company. Taking the top mistakes end-users make and the top mistakes executives make when security is concerned, creating fixes should be used to build bridges not more chasms.

Now the cat is out of the bag I better go hide my new Dilbert Hall of Fame before I get caught again. :)

So if you have a favorite Dilbert cartoon which you have lived please leave me a comment.