If you were a system administrator at a company and you received a security alert on your computer telling you to remove an unauthorized software program, would you do it even if you knew the software was important, or would you explain what the software does to try to get an exception?

In today’s story, one system admin chooses to uninstall an important software program.

Read on to learn about the consequences.

Unauthorized Software? Happy to remove it!

I work as a contractor for a department that aims high, flies, fights, and wins occasionally I’m told.

A security scan popped my work laptop for having Python installed, which I was told wasn’t authorized for local use at my site.

This all happened within an official ticketing system, so I didn’t even have to ask for it in writing or for it to be confirmed. I simply acknowledged and said I would immediately remove Python from any and all systems I operate per instructions.

Complying had a big impact.

The site lost a lot of its fancier VoIP system capabilities such as call trees, teleconference numbers, emergency dial downs, operator functionality, recording capabilities, and announcements in the span of about 30 minutes as I removed Python from the servers I ran.

The servers leveraged pyst (Python package) against Asterisk (VoIP service used only for those unique cases) to do fancy and cool things with call routing and telephony automation.

And then it didn’t.

Time to reinstall.

I reported why the outage was occurring, and was immediately told to reinstall Python everywhere and that they would make an exception.

A short lived outage, but still amusing.

Moral of the story: Don’t tell a System Admin to uninstall something without asking what it’s used for first.

Yes, the moral to the story makes sense.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

A fellow VoIP guy weighs in.

This person comments on the poor security.

Another person compares security scanners to toddlers.

This person thinks he should’ve talked to a manager first.

Here’s a story about a software audit.

Uninstalling that software was a really bad idea!

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.