[oclug] [OT] - In need of comments

[Jon Earle]

On Thu, 8 Aug 2002, Tom Trottier wrote:

> My advice would be:
>  - He should be fired just before the weekend or other quiet days, when
> the system is not needed, or while he is away on vacation, and escorted
> off. He should be offered a good settlement that won't take forever and
> won't make him mad.
>  - You should do a complete backup and then reinstall everything from
> its original disks. Check his update logs, manual and auto. Preferably,
> you should do a complete install on similar server (& client) systems
> in another location well before he is fired, document the procedure and
> any glitches, & have some users test that all the functions work.
> properly. Document the procedure & results for them to keep.

Both good points.  However, there are two more things to consider:

1.  Is the employee in question just a snob, or is does he have a
malicious nature?  If the former, it's highly unlikely he's going to be
stupid enough to sabotage the systems, either now or after he's been
terminated.  In a town as small as this, such an act would ruin his
professional reputation and torpedoe his career.  If the latter, then the
company has the law on their side.

2.  Why bring down the whole network, rebuild from scratch, etc etc?
When the boss is chatting with him, unplug the internet link and
disconnect any modems (or instruct the boss or another employee on the
procedure to do so).  Done - his outside access is cut off while allowing
the employees to continue to work (I know that in our shop, bringing down
the internal LAN stops our user's ability to work at all).  With the
external link down, fix/rebuild the firewall (those take little time to
setup once you've done a few), review and terminate his accounts, change
admin passwords, etc and finally, restore their services.

All this repair work shouldn't take more than a couple of days.  As
suggested however, document things and leave them your cell phone number -
repeat business is a wonderful thing.

One thing I'd do right away however, is to schedule with the owner, a time
to come in when the employee is not there, and do a full backup.  Should
something happen, you have a backup who's integrity __you_ can trust.

Good luck!
Jon