I have noticed a disturbing trend, for IT leaders (CIO, CTO, VP and Directors) in the mid-market to focus too much on the big picture and overlook the fundamentals. Sometimes, these executives that must also maintain an eye on the tactical become too absorbed in the crisis-of-the-moment and lose sight of the basics.
I was recently browsing one of the leading websites for IT management content, when there was an error in their application. The resulting screen display was the default error page for the web server (blocked out in the copy below):
Within an hour or so, the site was back up and functioning properly. Still, in that short period of time, the organization likely suffered a small impact to their credibility and provided lots of great information (web server version, database and version, method of connection between the two and application code structures) for would-be hackers. What (black-hat) hacker would not love to bring down and IT management content website?
In this case, it was an organization known for IT content that had (apparently) not yet customized their default website error pages. A simple, 15 minutes or so and the developers could have tailored the site for a more appropriate message.
All that said, it is easy to overlook these concerns. I confess, when I came across this error, the first thing I did was double check my own error page (on www.lichtenwalner.net). It is better now…. click here if you don’t believe me.
