This week Microsoft gave us “#BeTheNext Episode 2: The Security Context Wars” and I’m happy to say I found this episode even better than last week where we all remember Boston Mike winning. The contestants blogged their thoughts about that first episode and you can read what Mike, Chris, Alex, and Stacy had to say.
The judges this week were Buck Woody (blog | @buckwoody), Buck’s personal HR escort Tim DiMarco, and Bob Taylor. They handed the contestants a challenge that was based on security best practices. They were given one hundred minutes to complete the task. I found this length of time to be interesting. Why one hundred? Was an hour not enough last week, so they decided to add in some extra time? Or was the use of one hundred minutes a glimpse into “metric time”, something that along with Microsoft Points are the first steps towards the global corporate state found in RollerBall? (Since the story takes place in 2018, we don’t have to wait very long to find out the answer).
As it turned out one hundred minutes was not enough time either. I’m guessing next week they are given even more time.
The contestants were handed the challenge and then put into a room to start working. While we watched them work we also get some sidebar commentary. Stacy tells us how she wants to break down the scenario into specific tasks. Alex shares his thoughts on how he learned to use all the time available for a challenge, and to check his work. Boston Mike shocked me by saying that he wouldn’t be able to get the task done.
Security challenges can be daunting. There are many layers of cake between an end user and their data, and one of those layers is security. Beyond the standard installation choice of Windows or Mixed Mode authentication you have a lot of options in order to get the job done. You could fill a book with security best practices, something Denny Cherry (blog | @mrdenny) did last year with Securing SQL Server, a book that I served as the technical editor for. I don’t have the specifics of the challenge but I suspect that it involved more than just using SQL Server Management Studio to change the authentication mode from Windows to Mixed. I wasn’t expecting it to involve the creation of loginless users, or to give a dissertation on the inner workings of sp_helpprotect, but I was expecting that not everyone would be able to finish in time considering they were being watched like hawks with those cameras buzzing around.
After the hour was up Bob Taylor came in and ran a script to verify is the solutions passed or failed. They all failed. But someone has to win the challenge, so who got closest?
Each contestant had a chance to talk about their approach. Alex went first, followed by Mike, then Chris. When Chris mentioned going online to download a copy of AdventureWorks 2005 Buck quickly replied “that’s a big plus”. Buck did not make a similar comment regarding anyone (or anything) else, so Buck’s reaction stood out to me. Stacy went last and it appeared that she had gotten the furthest along with her solution.
That assumption was confirmed immediately as Buck announced Stacy was the winner! Boston Mike was the furthest away from a complete solution, with Alex and Chris getting about the same amount of work completed, just not as much as Stacy.
So, two challenges down, two different winners, and I am looking forward to next Tuesday when we get to see whiteboards, written notes, and team work. Oh, and we also get to see if Buck can go the entire show without being filmed holding a triple quad eggnog latte.
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