Old School Cybersecurity

I think I can tell this story now. Surely the statute of limitations has expired after all this time?

Travel with me, if you will, to the wild and lawless days of the mid 1990's, when computer programming was becoming A Thing (and a job you could make money working at!), and headhunters were thick on the ground. The halcyon days when you didn't need a degree, because getting a Master's in Computer Science was quite difficult. Only a few colleges recognized it at all, and barely any college even conferred a Bachelor's. You got Mathematics instead. Ask me how I know.

We started out poor, as all new couples did at the time. When we weren't slinging burgers and subs, Hubby was putting in resumés everywhere that fixed a computer, looked at a computer, thought about getting computers... After the incident at the sub shop where the owner insisted that his brand spankin' new computer (IBM PC running MS-DOS!) did so have an internal modem, Hubby decided he couldn't take the stupid any more, and signed up at a temp agency to be a typist or secretary or something other than drowning in the idiocy. (Syl, if you're still alive, screw you, your neglected wife and daughters deserved soooo much more human than you were capable of. I hope she kicked you to the curb and took her family's wealth with her; Heaven knows you did nothing with it except waste it over and over again.)

That temp agency placed Hubs at a local manufacturing company, and the manager soon recognized his mad computing skills and switched him to data entry and computer maintenance. He thrived at it – so much so, that when the company decided to massively downsize and fire half their considerable workforce, the manager revealed his secret identity: he had been the CEO of a company that the mega-corp bought up. But there was a clause in the contract, that if the company ever spun it off again, he would take back ownership and leave with a certain percentage of goods and equipment. He was given a stack of pink slips, with the manager's own at the bottom of the pile, and told to fire everyone in his department. He did, but immediately hired his cherry-picked specials to jump to the new company.

They only had six weeks to lick-claim what they were taking with them, including the warehouse where all their components languished.

Hubs told me the news. And I had A Vision.

Quite literally.

I joke about the detached retina in my second sight. I lifted the quote directly from Terry Pratchett (GNU!), but I get these insights sometimes, and I've learned to act on them and don't argue with myself. Or let anyone else argue with me, either. So upon learning that my hubs was fired (BOO! HISS!) and hired (YAY!), I saw what was coming with all the force of a bolt of lightning.

I asked, “So, who's in charge of extracting the computer files that you've been herding?”

“Oh, I'm sure someone else has already-”

I didn't let him get any further. We've ridden this roller coaster before. I grabbed him by his shirt, and pulled him close. It was the only way to get through his thick skull when he's in “I'm sure it's nothing” mode when I bleeping well know It Is NOT Nothing.

“Listen. To. Me. No one, and I mean NO ONE, is thinking about the computer files. NO ONE. You're it, and you need to extract them, and YOU are the only one who will think to do this. TOMORROW. I mean it!”

He got the hint. The very next day, as others were running around putting out fires and packing up their desks for the move, Hubs went over to the Cabinet and pulled out every zip drive they owned. Remember them? Twenty-five bucks a pop, best storage on the market? Ah, the good ol' hardcore silicon days...

And he plopped on the floor in front of the server, and started copying, copying, copying.

Every once in a while a fellow employee would stop, panting, their hair still on fire, and ask, “WHAT are you DOING? You need to pack your desk!”

“I'm collecting our files from the Q drive.”

Pause.

Blink.

Fire in hair quietly roaring, shooting off a crumb of ash.

Blink.

“Oh.”

Blink.

“Carry on.”

And Hubs did, while the employee would go screaming off about scalp heat, and promptly forget the conversation. Hubs collected fourteen zip drives full of precious data. All their files, a king's ransom and the heart of their business.

And, as I instructed him, he did the safest thing he could with them. Brought them home.

Because I may be a smidge security-oriented. I was stalked when I was younger, and headhunters had already called the house to pry for information on Hubs to see if he could be bribed into giving up company secrets. Yeah, nope. But knowing what the environment was like, and knowing the company didn't think about backups, Hubs had been bringing weekly backups home for quite a while. I would hide them somewhere in the apartment we lived in at the time, and when I hide something, you'd better believe it stays hidden. And Hubs, again at my emphatic suggestion, took different ways home after work to prevent followers from tracking him. We know of at least two times when that caution paid off.

So I was given the precious zip drives, and they were tucked away. Come get it, thieves, you'll have to go through me first! (As far as we know, they never tried. The apartment below us had a burglary attempt, but I called the police and thwarted that one. And on the firebug that lived across the alley, and the meth cooker that lived down the street. Why, yes, we moved quickly to a much more secure location.)

The weeks flew by. Everything was wrapped and placed in storage, except the bare essentials to keep the company selling product up till the very last minute. The last day, a Friday, each person was told to shut down and pack their computers and personal effects in their car. The movers swooped in after them and took the desks and chairs to the new location. Come next morning, all the employees were told to assemble at the new office, find their desk on the posted seating chart, and unpack and plug in their computers. On Monday they would be live and in business under the new name.

No pressure.

Bright and early on Saturday morning (ack), I hustle out to the packed car with a particular box. I told Hubs that I was coming with, to help unpack things. I wasn't the only spouse there, but people weren't expecting to see me. They were also more than a little surprised that I unpacked only one box, marched it into Hubs' temporary corner office (ooh, windows!), and set it on the floor. And sat on it. And watched Hubs unpack everything else into and onto his desk.

Like I said, windows. Everyone could see me not moving, not helping. Honestly, there wasn't much I could help with – what could the spouses do but unpack the cars? The equipment was under the aegis of the equipment people, and the warehouse was under the watchful curation of the warehouse supervisor, a lovely dragon lady I would get to know well secondhand through the years.

Hubs can set up his computer better than I ever could, of course. So I sat.

Till the dulcet tones of “Why the frigging frack will the fershlugginer doohickey not fit in the thingamajig?!?” echoed down the hall.

Ahh, server setup. And Hubs, hearing the call of his people, took off to help.

And I sat, and watched.

Hubs, with the CEO and the COO and the resident whiz tech, helped put the server together properly, knowing this was the baby that would pay their salaries.

And hours later, it was set up! It was working! It was humming with life! Whew!

And Hubs sat back, satisfied, and opened his hand, palm up. “Gentlemen, it's good to go. May I have the discs to load the data?”

Silence.

Realization.

Quiet panic.

Instant sauna, just add sweat.

And while they were stuttering in terror, Hubs smiled, and stood up, stretching his cramped legs. “Hold, that thought, I'll be right back.” All eyes followed him.

And in front of the whole crew, who had finished their work and gathered in those hours, he trotted down the hall, and poked his head into his office, where I was seated. I'd watched the whole assembly from my uncomfortable box seat.

And he grinned, staring right at me. “Honey, stand down from red alert.”

Ah, the signal we'd agreed to. I stood up, and the wicked-looking throwing knife I'd been hiding in a fold of my skirt came out. I tossed it in the air with a twirl, caught it, and made it vanish into its sheath hidden at my waist. And stepped away from the box, which he picked up, and took down the hall to the server.

And while I then sat in his nice comfy ergonomic desk chair, I watched Hubs begin the process of loading all that precious data into the server, and save their company. CEO and COO wandered off, to pass out in dark corners in utter relief.

I caught looks the rest of that day. Stunned looks, impressed looks, quirks of lips as grins of relief were suppressed. Realization that their bacon was saved. Understanding why I didn't move from that box till its cargo was safely delivered. Utter amazement at the audacity. A little consternation that I had a weapon on the premises. I mentioned earlier I'd been stalked; rest assured, I knew how to throw that knife with deadly accuracy. If someone that wasn't a recognizable employee had tried anything, at that office that was right inside the wide-open front door, you'd better believe I would have made someone have a bad day. Not a terminal one, but certainly uncomfortably delayed long enough for the police to collect their prize.

Funnily enough, Hubs didn't get all the data. There was a second secret server, the R Drive, that had Engineering's schematics on it. Can't get what you don't know about and don't have security access, now can you? The CEO had to do some groveling to retrieve that data, and was relieved all over again that Hubs had gotten the overwhelming bulk out before deadline. The thought of having to do that for all the data gave him nightmares for a long time.

Hubs didn't stay in that windowed office for long. He and his pet server were eventually moved to an interior locked room, affectionately known as Troglodyte Den. The secretary got the corner office, where the windows allowed her to see anyone approaching from outside, and visitors could be buzzed in. Security upgrades, gotta love it.

And no one ever questioned Hubs' competence for fifteen years, till the company was bought out and gutted. Hubs' work buddies are scattered now, but they still keep tabs on each other.

It's a shame that competence and loyalty aren't rewarded any more, but in that time and place, we were heroes. Felt darn good, let me tell you.

And gave me a fun story to tell from silicon's own wild west days.