Who Watches The Watchers?

[Darren Dirt]

Article on modern database misuse.

"... 'But who is watching the watchers?' The quote used to be a mantra for conspiracy theorists fearing a 1984 style world of government monitoring. But the watchers have turned out to be our own employees, bosses, co-workers and clients. The same people who go to work every day with growing access to internal reports, database queries, privileged communications and more. Every entity has an obligation to protect the private information they hold - either for customers or public citizens. And that means from threats big and small, external and internal."


(the story also mentions one interesting way of dealing with these kind of breaches: "Honeytokens: The Other Honeypot".)

[Mr. Analog]

I think like many other closed systems that are sufficiently important, you set up as much redundant administration as possible. I have yet to see a DB environment where there was just a single administrator who has mysterious godlike powers, I see plenty of groups who have to answer not only to users, managers and infrastructure but to each other as well.

I think it really boils down to ownership as well, when you sign on to become a DBA you get the benefits to owning the tasks therein (bigger pay, more executive power, etc) but you also by taking ownership have to be responsible for things that happen to the database whether you are the culprit or not.

I dunno, just my take on the years I've had...