Wearing a white hat is sometimes more difficult than wearing a black hat. I’m talking about the ethics that goes with the title. Just as a cop needs to know how a crime is committed, but chooses to stop the criminal instead of committing it, a white hat needs to know how a black hat performs the tricks they do, but use the knowledge to stop them instead.

Having been in ethically ‘gray’ areas before, it makes going back there an interesting scenario when the occasion comes up. When a client asks for help in spying on someone who is potentially causing them harm is one of those times when you could quite possibly cause a lot more harm than good. Observing actions is quite different than keeping records of them.

Here’s an example scenario:

So Mary Jo takes an hour and fifteen minutes instead of an hour, interesting. She claims she only takes an hour. A clear loss for the business, but possibly just bad time keeping. Harry has been checking his bank account and personal email regularly for over a week every hour on the hour. Understandable since he’s waiting for his tax credit, but once a day is acceptable, not 5 minutes every hour in a eight hour workday. Then there is Jane. She works in Human Resources…

Jane thinks no one knows she carries a thumb-drive with her everyday. She was a loyal employee for 5 1/2 years until the boss promoted Susy to head of the department. Now she copies everyone’s time sheets, payroll information, even social security numbers to her thumb-drive every Friday. Even worse, she’s handing all the accounting information she handles over to a competitor to gain a foot in the door over there, and blackmail the clients company at the same time.

Mary Jo and Harry will get a write-up at the worst, but Jane, Jane doesn’t think anyone could track when something is copied from the computers to a thumb-drive. Now Jane is going to have criminal charges brought against her.

Being a gray-hat for a company to catch employees like Jane can sometimes cause the people who are doing more innocent things to get caught in the net that was cast. Kind of like dolphins in a tuna net. The catch is that everything Jane has access to, and Harry, and Mary Jo are the things that most IT Admins have full access to. Having the ethics and morals to do good with our knowledge, and not let something slide so we can get away with our own crimes simply can’t be allowed.

In short, to be an admin, you need to know the tricks of the trade. To be a good admin, you need morals and ethics to go with your skills.