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Entry tags:
fun with information security
So this project I'm working on has human subjects. (Everyone who's ever done live-subject research is already on my side, I know.) Among the things promised them on the statement of informed consent is that anything with any potentially identifying information whatsoever will be kept either on our person (one of us) or under lock and key at all times. So, carryon bags instead of checked luggage, etc. etc.
The one who handles all the processing of these data is, of course, me. And do I have a locking file cabinet in my office? Of course not. I have a desk with six drawers, and one of the drawers has a lock, but do I have the key? No.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wordplay, similarly, does not have a key to her desk, so swapping desks would be pointless (to say nothing of the drag it would be). There's a file cabinet with a lock in here, but the office manager has no keys to any of the furniture here; if anyone does have the keys, it's the people who had these offices before all their clearances came through and they moved to the other building. We solved this problem, or so we thought, by getting a key to the office door. When the stuff is in my (admittedly unlocked) desk, the office is locked, so the stuff is technically still under lock and key.
Yesterday, it turns out my boss isn't happy with that solution. I was going to go over and get documents people had just brought back from the field, but no, because if they were only going to be kept in an unlocked drawer in a locked office, no good. He'll bring them over in the morning, he says.
Trouble with this, of course, is: that means someone -- and you can guess who that will be -- has to schlep the things back and forth between buildings every damn day until her clearance comes through.
This made me very depressed -- the whole sum of it, I mean, not just the prospect of schlepping every day but the fact that the special key-getting effort I'd made had been for nothing, combined with a separate issue in which someone gave the traveling researchers a bunch of copies of an older version of the IRB statement and I think people think it was me and I'm the one person it couldn't possibly have been -- and the very-depression combined with the fighting-something-off-or-maybe-allergies-being-a-massive-pain conspired to convince me to blow off rehearsal last night. So I went home, and watched some TV, and ate some ice cream (augh! backsliding!), and went to bed early.
And this morning, I hadn't backslid as much as I'd feared (just held steady, in fact, so that's all right), but I had to hurry, because when the boss brings me stuff he tends to do so first thing, so if I roll in at 9:30 or even 9:15 he has to find somewhere to leave things before I get there (which is harder when my office is locked).
Of course, he's not here when I get here at 8:55.
I do a bit of scavenging, though, with the office manager's blessing, and find one -- one! in the whole building! -- file cabinet whose keys are in the lock. And she's going to have the boys bring it to me, so I'll be able to lock stuff up and not have to go back and forth every day. Hurrah!
Sent an e-mail to this effect to the boss, incidentally, and he wrote back at 9:20 to say Well done and he'd bring stuff over "this morning". My money's on 11:30 -- and of course there's little or no work I can do until then.
Sigh.
The one who handles all the processing of these data is, of course, me. And do I have a locking file cabinet in my office? Of course not. I have a desk with six drawers, and one of the drawers has a lock, but do I have the key? No.
wordplay, similarly, does not have a key to her desk, so swapping desks would be pointless (to say nothing of the drag it would be). There's a file cabinet with a lock in here, but the office manager has no keys to any of the furniture here; if anyone does have the keys, it's the people who had these offices before all their clearances came through and they moved to the other building. We solved this problem, or so we thought, by getting a key to the office door. When the stuff is in my (admittedly unlocked) desk, the office is locked, so the stuff is technically still under lock and key.Yesterday, it turns out my boss isn't happy with that solution. I was going to go over and get documents people had just brought back from the field, but no, because if they were only going to be kept in an unlocked drawer in a locked office, no good. He'll bring them over in the morning, he says.
Trouble with this, of course, is: that means someone -- and you can guess who that will be -- has to schlep the things back and forth between buildings every damn day until her clearance comes through.
This made me very depressed -- the whole sum of it, I mean, not just the prospect of schlepping every day but the fact that the special key-getting effort I'd made had been for nothing, combined with a separate issue in which someone gave the traveling researchers a bunch of copies of an older version of the IRB statement and I think people think it was me and I'm the one person it couldn't possibly have been -- and the very-depression combined with the fighting-something-off-or-maybe-allergies-being-a-massive-pain conspired to convince me to blow off rehearsal last night. So I went home, and watched some TV, and ate some ice cream (augh! backsliding!), and went to bed early.
And this morning, I hadn't backslid as much as I'd feared (just held steady, in fact, so that's all right), but I had to hurry, because when the boss brings me stuff he tends to do so first thing, so if I roll in at 9:30 or even 9:15 he has to find somewhere to leave things before I get there (which is harder when my office is locked).
Of course, he's not here when I get here at 8:55.
I do a bit of scavenging, though, with the office manager's blessing, and find one -- one! in the whole building! -- file cabinet whose keys are in the lock. And she's going to have the boys bring it to me, so I'll be able to lock stuff up and not have to go back and forth every day. Hurrah!
Sent an e-mail to this effect to the boss, incidentally, and he wrote back at 9:20 to say Well done and he'd bring stuff over "this morning". My money's on 11:30 -- and of course there's little or no work I can do until then.
Sigh.