The IT Guy

When the auditors demanded access to the bookkeeper's computer, she became so nervous and flustered that she forgot her password, “Marmaduke.” All she could remember was that it was like “Scooby-Do.” For several minutes, the auditors played Twenty Questions with her. They asked her if her password was “Scoopy-Do,” “Poopy-Do,” “Scoopy-Doo-doo,” etc. With each wild stab they took at the password, after the first few failed to strike pay dirt in the poor, flustered woman's brain, she would shed fresh tears and shake her head helplessly.

Feeling they were making fools of themselves, the auditors gave up playing Twenty Questions with the poor woman and the company's IT guy was called in to retrieve the bookkeeper's forgotten password from the company's computer system.

The IT guy's business card read:

OTPS System Security LLC

Otto T. P. Schmidt, President

What OTPS stood for, aside from being Otto T. P. Schmidt's initials, was Only The Paranoid Survive. It was Otto T. P. Schmidt's business motto and personal credo. He lived by those words.

While Otto T. P. Schmidt was attempting to retrieve the bookkeeper's forgotten password from the company's computer system, her computer terminal emitted a wail like a police siren and displayed the following message: WARNING! OTPS SYSTEM SECURITY HAS DETECTED AN ATTEMPTED UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY INTO THIS COMPUTER SYSTEM. AS A RESULT, THE COMPUTER SYSTEM HAS BEEN LOCKED DOWN. TO HAVE THE COMPUTER SYSTEM UNLOCKED, CONTACT OTPS SYSTEM SECURITY AT WWW.OTPS.COM. This was followed by puzzled mutterings emitted by various company employees as their computer terminals inexplicably froze leaving them frustrated and clueless.

"Damn! I hate it when that happens," said Otto T. P. Schmidt.

Much to his chagrin, Otto T. P. Schmidt was in the position of a man who has locked himself out of his own house. He had installed a "back door" into the company's computer system for his own private use but he had lost the secret access code.

Originally, the secret access code had been a line from a song by Michelle Shocked. Then one night, out of curiosity, he had recorded himself and discovered that he sang in his sleep. Well, actually, it was more like humming. Vague and indistinct though his nocturnal vocalizations were, he had worried that some rogue programmer might bug his bedroom, record him humming the tune to “Come A Long Way” in his sleep and put two-and-two together.

Although he suspected that most hackers were metal-heads, he couldn't be certain Michelle Shocked's witty reference to “All Along The Watchtower” wouldn't bubble up in their minds like the tune of the perking coffee pot in the famous Maxwell House ad.

Abandoning the weak, user friendly passwords created by the typical, not-very-security-conscious computer user, he had opted for a strong secret access code of the type favored by the military, financial institutions and paranoid cyber security consultants. The new secret access code consisted of a string of letters and numbers generated by his computer. He had manually changed a few of the letters and numbers at random to foil sophisticated algorithmic attacks. Then he had made the secret access code long, then longer, then too long for any normal human being to remember. The secret access code was now so long and randomized that it would have taken a quantum computer the lifetime of several universes to crack. Still, he had worried that it might be cracked by a sufficiently clever hacker and there were many clever hackers lurking in the shadows of the virtual world ready to pounce on any weakness or vulnerability in a computer system's defenses. The thought had caused him many a sleepless night. Tinkering with the secret access code to make it stronger and more invulnerable to attack had relieved his anxiety but he had had to stop obsessing about it and get on with his life.

He had burned the secret access code onto a compact disc and then erased all trace of it from his computer. No back-up copy was made. Ironically, he had felt safer knowing that there was only one copy of the secret access code in existence to safeguard. He had preferred to put all his eggs in one basket and watch the basket very carefully.

At first, he had stored the CD containing the secret access code in a safety deposit box at his bank. But fearing that his professional enemies—many and devious they were!—might somehow gain access to his safety deposit box and steal the secret access code from him, he had taken the valuable CD home and had hidden it under his mattress, then on the shelf in a broom closet, and finally in the back of his underwear drawer. Those hiding places were too easily discovered, however, so he had transferred the secret access code to a flash drive, which was smaller and easier to conceal than a CD, and had hidden the flash drive behind a loose brick in the fireplace of his house. This had made the loose brick stand out from the others. Choosing a less noticeable hiding place, he had taped the flash drive to the float ball in the toilet tank of his bathroom commode. Then he had worried that the tape might fail and the secret access code would be flushed down the toilet and had hidden it elsewhere.

In a feverish effort to outwit and foil his enemies, he had constantly devised new hiding places for the secret access code. At various times, it had been concealed in a hollowed out book on cyber security in his personal library on the subject; in a hidden file in an old computer that supported one end of his coffee table; in plain sight on his virtual desktop; in plain sight on his actual desktop; laboriously knitted into a scarf; e-mailed to himself disguised as spam; concealed in an iconic image of Farrah Fawcett; stuffed inside a frozen turkey; in the pocket of a mothballed tuxedo; inside the cassette of a worn out “Bay Watch” tape; and buried in his backyard in an Army surplus ammunition box. But each time he had hidden the secret access code in a new location, he had become paranoid and had imagined that his enemies had somehow discovered its hiding place and were about to steal it and wreak havoc on his IT customers and their computer systems. He had then hidden the secret access code in a new, more obscure location but he had soon become paranoid all over again and had rehidden the secret access code in yet another, even more obscure location. Finally, he had put the secret access code back onto a CD, put the CD into the Army surplus ammunition box and had buried it deep in the Idaho woods near a big pine tree with a distinctive, fire-damaged crown.

He had told himself that he was going from being paranoid for professional reasons to being just plain paranoid and he had resolved not to dig up the secret access code and move it again. But the urge to do so had kept growing like an unscratched itch. Finally, when he could resist the urge no longer, he had rushed into the woods in search of the big pine tree with the distinctive, fire-damaged crown. But since his last visit to the area, it had been clear cut. The big pine tree was gone and so was the forest!

He had examined the forest of tree stumps attempting to figure out where the big pine tree had stood but one big stump looked pretty much like another. He had briefly wondered if his enemies had unearthed the Army surplus ammunition box and stolen the CD containing the secret access code and then clear cut the forest to cover their tracks. He had immediately realized how absurd he was being and had laughed at himself.

After spending several fruitless hours searching for the buried Army surplus ammunition box containing the CD that held secret access code, he had gone home wondering if he had been too paranoid or not paranoid enough.