Brandon Lane CIO: Episode 4

The Road to the Corner Office

"Thanks Kelly. I want to sit in on the desk at some point and see what it is like. Can you get Richard to come and see me when he gets in. That is as soon as he gets in, don't even give him time to get his coat off."

"Will do Boss, catch you later."

As Kelly walked away Brandon's mind was racing. He was used to cursing IT every Monday morning when the systems were slow or he couldn't get in, and now it would be him in the firing line. He made a mental note not to schedule his hour on the desk for a Monday.

He wondered what the changes were that had gone wrong. Looking around the department it looked very calm, no one seemed to be running round  like headless chickens. In fact everyone seemed to have their heads down over their screens. A dreadful thought crossed Brandon's mind*. You can take the auditor of audit,but you can't take the audit out of the auditor. It was time to play dumb.

He wandered a few desks away to where he was fairly sure no one had been paying attention to his discussion with Kelly, though being honest he thought he needn't have bothered judging by the number of white earphones in use.

He headed for a vaguely awake desk jockey with  and tapped him on the shoulder. The reaction was as electrifying as a piece of  silica aerogel

Eventually there was some sort of reaction and a slo mo unfolding of limbs.

"Thanks for joining me in what some of us consider to be reality. I'm new here. Can you tell me what you are doing?"

"Err, not really it is difficult."

"OK, is that difficult as in I'm probably too dumb to understand it, or you are too dumb to explain it?"

Brandon noticed the total absence of a meaningful pause before the DJ responded.

"No offence, but you look like you are too dumb to understand it."

"Well thanks for that vote of confidence." Unlike the DJ Brandon did understand the value of a well timed pause

.....

"So I guess you don't need me to tell you that you've got a buffer flow vulnerability in that code."

To be fair the kid didn't miss a beat.

"Oh yeah, I was going to sort that. Anything else I can do for you, only I'm busy. "

"You know there is rumour that is about to start going around that you've really p****ed off the new CIO. Oh Hai there BTW, I'm Brandon Lane, your new CIO. And you are?"

"Hi Brandon. I'm Jake."

"Jake,Is there any chance you could tell me what went wrong over the weekend?"

"Err, I think it was something to do with static IP addresses"

"Tell me more..."

"Like the MFDs all had static addresses but... did you just say you were the new CIO?"

"I did"

"Should I shut up?"

"You can.but you might as well continue digging."

"You aren't going to sack me?"

"You know, something tells me that you can't actually dig a deeper hole than you are already in, but you can start to climb out of it"

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*"I bet they are all playing WoW "



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