[moritzwarhier]

100%

Urgency.

Emotions.

It's all there, and high-stakes environments with no proper protocol are most vulnerable.

Source: used to work part-time in IT support at a hospital, by now 10+ years ago, so it was routinely requested to circumvent regulations and security protocols, even medical ones (cough Windows in ICU monitors and other medical "kiosk" PCs that should absolutely not run Windows)

[Krasnol]

I love those admin passwords which a tech will give you at some point because he doesn't want to do the work himself. If they even have passwords...

Unfortunately Siemens woke up.

[moritzwarhier]

You mean

  admin

or

  Administrator

?

Horrific, people should be jailed for cyberattacks when they carelessly just give out this word.

The experiences I meant were mostly

- password reset requests (admittedly, we had a protocol even then to strictly require a "physical signature", normally meaning Fax or internal snail mail)

- medical protocols: don't wanna go into too much detail here, but:

1) Windows requires a lot of maintenance, often even hard restores, to function normally, even when sold as the UI for physical ICU monitors

2) Medical personell often is severely overworked, especially people in important, but not formally highly-qualified roles. And things like Surgery rooms and ICUs often have very slim time slots.

With the former, you should not enter into them without wearing appropriate clothing.

It doesn't prevent people working there from requesting you to finally come over and make that UEFI-Windows-Crapware-Kiosk-PC which was sold as a medical device boot... of course especially not when there is an ongoing surgery nearby. And of course, your higher-ups will be there to help you sort out these issues without violating protocols...

thankfully I didn't do careless things there and haven't witnessed IT-related disasters there. But still, I gave these examples for a reason :D

there was a healthy culture but some of the situations encountered in medical IT support should really require specialized, short-term training.

Keeping up rigorous hygiene protocols requires dedicated work by professionals, especially in a large hospital.

And the same argument can be made for account protection and user support for large software providers.

[Krasnol]

I support radiologies...I have seen things, patients wouldn't believe. MRI in helium off the shoulder of the CS student. I watched DICOMs corrupt in the dark near the PACS gateway. All those moments will be lost in time...like unsaved reports in rain. Time to reboot

[sfink]

Well done.

Maybe this is spoiling the effect, but for people who don't recognize it instantly:

> I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_in_rain_monologue

[71bw]

We seem to work in very similar fields. I tend to work on the back-end line. To put it lightly: it is all a big shitshow. Vendor lock-in, non-standard communication, network admins who have no idea what they are doing, radiology imaging clinics with no IT staff at all (even on-call external people) or places that had their network set up 15 years ago by a guy who is now long dead or otherwise MIA. And then, inevitably, you have to guide the innocent girl sitting at the front desk to somewhere in the local backrooms just to reset a server remotely.

[Krasnol]

Yes, seen it all. I love how the girl is still talk weeks later.

It is a great field though. The wide range of tech you're confronted with is astonishing and all of it live 24/7.

I wish I'd have discovered the field earlier in my life, there is so much room for improvement.