I do think one of the challenges was identified right up front: her UNIVERSITY’S IT department. I have been in IT for a while (about 18 years) and have seen 3 kinds of people in University IT departments: ROADies, as above; students who are varyingly bright, but have no experience or intention to be there in 6 months; and people who are really good at what they do and work for the University for reasons other than a competitive salary. Universities are generally resource constrained (that is the polite term, right?) and like to use slave labor ^D^D^D^D^D^D^D^D work-study programs for as much as possible. Many of the students are competent, or even better, but lack oversight, experience and long-term commitment. There are far too few people in the last category.

The security industry is accused, with good reason, of forgetting occasionally that IT systems exist to allow people to do work. I have been guilty of that myself on occasion. Right now my job is to try to translate business requirements into technical solutions, and vice versa. It is hard enough when the 2 sides just don’t understand each other, in this case it appears that IT is not even trying to provide a service. It reminds me of the “service” part of “civil service”. If you work in IT you are overhead. In any company you should be making money, helping the people who make money, or working on your resume.