The recent mad house scene that played out with the city of San Francisco and its IT administrator, Terry Childs, has once again brought to the forefront a long neglected bane of most enterprises - the concentration of responsibility and knowledge of critical systems, especially technology systems in the hands of one individual and the attendant crisis that follows if an emergency arises.

The main issue the San Fransisco incident raises is that of trust, namely, how much trust should corporations place in the custodians of their technology infrastructure? The dilemma here is that organizations, enterprises and even small businesses who use consultants have to place some level of trust on these "employees" and expect them to act honestly and ethically. There is also the expectation and indeed, knowledge that at some point, such employees may pose certain risks to the system. A recent survey by InformationWeek found that about 53% of business executives considered authorized users and employees one of the greatest threats to their systems. In that same study, 43% of all employees were considered the greatest threats. The bottom line is it only takes one bad apple to make all of us go squeamish. It is my belief that most employees are indeed ethical, honest and have the best interest of their employers at heart.