FairPort Accused of Faking Network Readiness Test 144
wytcld writes "When Verizon spun off its Northern New England lines to FairPoint, FairPoint leased Verizon's computer network to manage them. This was costly, so FairPoint readied its own network. To prove its own network was ready for the switchover a demonstration was prepared for an outside auditor, Liberty. Now a whistleblower claims: '...when Liberty was watching what they thought was "flow thru" within a system and from one system to another, they were really only seeing a small program that was created to assimilate what they wanted the systems to do. They were not actually in the systems at the time nor were they in the test systems. They were in a newly created small program that used screen shots from the real system to deceive the audience into believing that they were watching a real demonstration.' How easy is it to find auditors who can be fooled by such a simple trick? Whether or not the test was faked, the network has proved so unready that FairPoint is close to bankruptcy, and may have its licenses to operate revoked in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont."
"assimilate" or "simulate"? (Score:3, Insightful)
"they were really only seeing a small program that was created to assimilate what they wanted the systems to do"
that statement makes little sense to me as it stands and i'm wondering if the person misspoke and meant to say "simulate". or am i missing something (perhaps someone would care to explain)?
It (almost) worked for Enron (Score:5, Insightful)
It wouldn't surprise me that the same thing happens in IT auditing.
Re:So what does this mean for end users? (Score:5, Insightful)
It means there isn't the data throughput for the system you might expect. So over selling becomes a bigger issue, as does reliability
It could be even worse, depending on why the faked the audit.
I mean, i supposed they could have faked the audit becasue they are so awesome that they wanted to keep it a secret...but that's not a likely scenario.
Re:Help! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm lucky...Comcast Cable
Wow, FairPoint does suck.
Re:Very Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
I work for an accounting firm that has a team of IT auditors who, between all of them, can barely spell "TCP/IP", let alone implement a proper network security test. They run various programs and review various policies and at the end of their testing the client is given a piece of paper, by people these with pieces of paper, given to them by other people with pieces of paper, that say they are secure and can go about their business so they can say their asses are covered for one more year.
I shudder to think how it will affect my company, and ultimately me and my family, when one of these companies gets hacked and loses thousands of patients' information and financial records because they thought they were secure, based on what some company that they paid thousands of dollars to, told them.
Re:Help! (Score:1, Insightful)
Pick your poison.
A: They meant simulate, and /. has shitty editors. /. still has shitty editors who didn't catch the typo.
B: They created a terrible new buzzword, "assimulate" (assume + simulate), and