Folks, this is a wild story!

It comes to us all the way from South Africa and it gives readers a glimpse into how things are done over there occasionally…

We think you’re gonna be shocked!

Check out what this IT worker had to say about a pretty unusual day on the job.

Network security breach, but not as you know it.

“I’m in the Johannesburg area of South Africa, where I have been doing network and IT support (among other things) for a variety of clients, some of which are located in a bad part of town. And in Jo’burg terms, ‘bad’ is, indeed, pretty bad.

Recently I got a distress call from one of them. After the break, the boss had arrived at the office early, and was unable to log into the network server. His office is on the ground floor.

So I drove down there as usual, with all car doors locked, my head on swivel and the local private security response guys on speed dial (but fortunately no mishap this time) and made my way to the server room on the second floor.

Wow!

Where the cause of the problem became immediately apparent: some person or persons unknown had gotten in through the roof and grabbed what they could. The server wasn’t down, it was gone.

Welcome to Johannesburg, where the biggest network security risk is not theft of just data, but theft of your network infrastructure itself!

Fortunately the boss (who was a classic car afficionado) firmly believed in the ‘spare wheel’ approach and had kept their previous server in his junk room at home.

That’ll work!

One hurried trip there later I found myself trying to dust off and revive an ancient Compaq Proliant of 1998 vintage- the sort of kit that has its plastic front bezel and panels discolored to a bright shade of yellow.

With the aid of some compressed air to blow out the cobwebs, two ancient hard drives that I keep in my junk box for just such an occasion (this is Africa after all, so one does meet a need for obsolete hardware parts every now and then) and a lot of grunt, I managed to get it going in time before work started again the next morning.

It was so slow it needed a tow rope, seeing as a few old 100baseT hubs was the best we could do on such short notice, but it did get them going until proper kit could be sourced from the insurance claim. I shudder to think what their premium must be like now, in that part of town.

IT support in downtown Jo’burg… Never a dull moment!”

Let’s see what readers had to say about this.

This person weighed in.

Another reader shared their thoughts.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employer who has an unexpectedly hard time retrieving a company vehicle from a fired employee.

And this individual spoke up.

This fella probably never has a dull day at his job!

This is wild stuff.

But it sounds like he’s pretty darn good at dealing with all of these issues.

This guy gets some pretty crazy IT assignments!