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| Spotlight Story | | | Working with consultants
|  This is the second in a series of four columns on working effectively with consultants. When the client and consultant are discussing problems and how the consultant could help, both parties must be conscious that a consultant always has two allegiances: to the manager hiring her and to the firm employing the manager. You must define the scope of the consulting assignment so that the consultant can in fact legitimately tackle the task. For example, it would be pointless for a local manager to request assistance in implementing a security solution requiring corporate-wide changes. Such a project would be beyond the manager's scope. The converse problem is consultants, especially those from large firms, which use templates to prepare consulting reports where string variables are modified to include details from the client firm but which have little research and less analysis of the specifics of the client's situation and needs. It is an excellent practice to ask for a couple of sample anonymized reports from consultants before accepting their proposals; finding identical language in substantive sections of the two reports should give you pause. As you evaluate potential consultants, look for those who can state their understanding of your problems clearly. I am fond of the phrase, "Let me see if I have understood" because it's a chance to test my perceptions against those of the client. Ask your candidates to tell you how they see your situation and to define the problems they perceive. Be especially attentive to consultants who challenge your initial views of your problem: you want consultants who are able to think independently and bring their expertise to bear on your problems, not sycophants who are willing to hide their knowledge and their disagreement to get the contract. Just as important, you want consultants who can articulate their views clearly and non-aggressively. You need a reasoned exchange of views from which to learn, not a boxing match where winning is the object. Sometimes consultants are (foolishly and improperly) asked by managers to produce support for a predefined set of conclusions as part of an internal political battle; consultants must be clear that their report may very well disagree with preconceptions. Indeed, consultants should be chary of accepting such assignments: they can be the kiss of death, since providing a professional result that conflicts with the client's predetermined outcome can result in slanderous comments in the community, yet unprofessionally kowtowing to unreasonable demands can justifiably lead to a tarnished reputation, litigation for malfeasance, and perhaps expulsion from professional societies. In the next column, I'll look at relating to consultants for effective use of your time and money. M. E. Kabay, PhD, CISSP-ISSMP, specializes in security and operations management consulting services. CV online. Read full story | | | | Related News: | |  | Feds bust $55 million international telephony hacking ring
The losses in this case, which exceeded $55 million in the US alone and impacted more than 2,500 companies across the globeThe US Department of Justice today said it helped crack a ring of fraudsters who allegedly hacked into the telephone systems of large corporations and entities in the United States and abroad and sold information about the compromised telephone systems to Pakistani nationals residing in Italy. Darwin Awards for Disaster Recovery
Many of you may already be familiar with the general Darwin Awards, where "The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it..." In this fine tradition, Webtorials now has the "Darwin Awards for Disaster Recovery" by Gary Audin, Delphi. Distributed traffic capture optimizes monitoring
Visibility can be the critical factor in heading off the increasing number of attacks, outages and data breaches in large-scale distributed networks. But up to now total visibility of Ethernet networks has been infeasible due to the cost of deploying analytical devices throughout the network. Distributed traffic capture is a new approach to network monitoring that can deliver complete, selectable and centralized visibility. June Giveaways
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training from Global Knowledge to two lucky readers and 15 copies each of books on IPv6 security, the Cisco Secure Firewall Services Module, and Active Directory Domain Services 2008. Deadline for entries June 30. Network World on Twitter? You bet we are | |
Is Your Company Prepared for the Unexpected?
In this live webcast, June, 25, 2009, you'll hear how to prepare the network now to seamlessly continue business operations during a major crisis, as well as a case study of an organization that has implemented a business continuity network plan.
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