The Customer, however odd, is Always Right

We have all heard about the owner that is paranoid...I have met him. Many times. Multiple times, in fact, CEOs aren't as paranoid as an owner of a private company.

Owners are unique, they have done everything at one time and now as business booms and they get larger, fear for their IP, intellectual property.

Maybe it's a business report, financing, merger details, secret projects but whatever it is, they want it kept secret and away from everyone.

Excellent, that's why they use Lotus Notes and Domino, for it's levels of security.

I was asked to monitor who was attempting to access certain files(email mail boxes and an application) by an owner. No problem, configure DDM, set up specific rules to report ONLY to me, not the normal admins.

Ok, so I get the usual SMTP, network related messages, we cleared it down to just watch for anyone trying to access the files.

Lo and behold, he was right. The owner picked out someone and wanted to be alerted if I received any notifications about them. I did.

So now the question becomes what data do i want to keep for compliance/legal purposes? Copies of the email notifier of course, but logs too?

Another client wanted to ensure absolutely no one could access his email, even if he himself messed it up he did not want me or any admin to fix it. I did not agree that this was a good idea but provided him some guidelines to secure his mail file and encrypt it. I pointed out that my not having "God" access as he called it would create issues for the rest of the employees. We even discussed creating his own server and domain for him alone.

So never question the paranoia or odd requests from owners of businesses because they do know what they are talking about usually.