Bonum Certa Men Certa

The ISO Delusion: When the Employer Doesn’t Understand the Company's Value Proposition (Building Systems) and Rejects Security

Probably the final week of this series

Sirius Open Source watersideSummary: Sirius 'Open Source' has failed to sell what it was actually good at; instead it hired unqualified people and outsourced almost everything

THIS is the part of this series where we focus on examples of Sirius failing on technical merits and compliance/conformance. Eventually we decided to show redacted E-mails on ISO along with my copied messages to management regarding bollocking and how it all started, me asking for an apology etc. Being accredited or recognised isn't the same as being capable and potent. As I mentioned in the very first post in this series, when I joined the company it was different beyond recognition. The company had its own hosting (in its own premises). In 2022 we were suffering habitual outages as we don't control our systems anymore (Slack, AWS downtimes were common; in prior years clients that relied on Clownflare also suffered outages due to Clownflare rather than their own hosting). To make matters worse, there were security breaches and the company ignored them. I kept bringing that to management's attention, only to be ignored or rebuffed. Remember this hoax of Citation/Atlas was covered in Techrights years ago. Sirius does not teach its staff real security and does not hire people who understand or value security.



"Sirius does not teach its staff real security and does not hire people who understand or value security."The company had a bizarre trajectory of moving from self-hosted (e.g. Asterisk), then outsourced (but still Free software, 'managed' Asterisk), then outsourced proprietary spyware like Google Voice. If "Open Source has won" and if Free software is becoming more widely used, then why is Sirius going in the exact opposite direction of what it was advocating? This is a management decision. It's not the fault of technical staff -- the staff which all along opposed this.

Notice the practice of password outsourcing. Here's a direct quote sent in a request to me personally: "Put the WordPress credentials (admin user, etc) in a lastpass note and share it with xxxxx (securely, within lastpass) and we'll be setting up a very temporary and basic portal to share info across the team, to help keep everyone better updated given how Absolutely Mentally Busy it is right now. It's entirely for internal use when on the VPN."

"It's not the fault of technical staff -- the staff which all along opposed this."It's another example of mishandling access credentials inside third parties (Slack, LastPass etc.), oftentimes not just rejecting "Open Source" but actively ripping apart Open Source things that work, replacing them with technically inferior and likely illegal (in some cases, due to data protection) proprietary stuff.

The management did even worse than this; it failed to do very basic things, such as sending payslips and sometimes paying the pension provider. Instead they made colourful excuses, so I decided to take photographs of letters from the pension provider, recalling those blunders and deciding that it's worth discussing belatedly (and maybe add E-mails also; there were loads of E-mails about payslips, not just pensions, spanning different years from 2018 until the present day; there were phonecalls too, but those aren't recorded).

The management was also bad at communication and correspondence. See the example below (2019):

Subject: Re: I need these tickets dealt with by support Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2019 11:15:56 +0100 From: Rianne Schestowitz xxxxxxx To: xxxxxxx CC: xxxxxxx

Hi xxxxxxx,

I responded to this email last weekend. Please check your inbox. If you haven't received it, I can send it again.

Many thanks,

Rianne

-- Rianne Schestowitz, NOC Extension 2834423 Sirius - stress free technology http://www.siriusopensource.com t: xxxxxxx

> Hi, > > I need these tickets dealt with by support. > > 1. Ticket#108642: Roy or xxxxxxx need to answer about security. > 2. Ticket#108813: Replied with more questions. Can't reproduce the > error so far. Back with Support, awaiting feedback. > 3. (Multiple) Tickets relating to masking - Code fix done, Release done > and in live. Check with each client once data reimported. Support > team can do this. xxxxxxx have already confirmed it works. > > 1. Ticket#108833: Already fixed, just needs a fresh xxxxxxx import. > 2. Ticket#108769: The masking fix is done, we just need to schedule a > reload. > > > > xxxxxxx xxxxxxx > Sirius - stress free technology > http://www.siriusopensource.com > Tel: xxxxxxx



This was the year bullying against staff started, not too long after Gates Foundation money had landed under an NDA and something called Sirius Open Source Inc. was quietly formed in the state of Washington (where Microsoft and Gates are).

"Inaction and retaliation led to what became of it, spilling the beans out in public."We spent nearly a month explaining what I had already written internally before resigning; we remembered to publish the entire PDF at the end (crossposted in my personal site too) as it is important to emphasise that I raised most of these concerns for years inside the company. Inaction and retaliation led to what became of it, spilling the beans out in public. I never did anything even remotely like this with any of my past employers.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete
 
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Links 26/10/2025: Microsoft Spies on Gamers, Open Transport Community Conference
Links for the day
Links 26/10/2025: LLM Slop / Plagiarism Programs Continue to Disappoint, CISA Layoffs Threaten Systems
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/10/2025: Gemsync and Joining the Small Web
Links for the day
India.com a Click-baiting, SEO-Spamming, Slopfarming Heap
They do this almost every day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 25, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 25, 2025
Without XBox Consoles, XBox is No More, It's Just a Brand (More Rumours of Microsoft Ending XBox, Then Laying Off Lots of Staff)
All signs indicate that Microsoft wants to "exit" the XBox business (not brand), but it does not want to publicly admit this as it would alarm staff and shareholders
Gemini Links 25/10/2025: Portugal, Midnightpub, and "Tech Right Admins"
Links for the day
Almost 2026 Already (When We Turn Twenty)
In just over a year the site will turn 20
When "Sponsored Feature" in The Register MS Means Ponzi Scheme Promotion From the Communist Party of China (CPC)
the promotion of a financial scam
Week of EPO Leaks: Workers of the EPO Are Getting a Pay Cut While Prices Rise Fast
More to come in the next few days
Microsoft is Finally Giving Up on XBox, The Chief Says the Grapes Are Sour Anyway
Microsoft loses hundreds of dollars on each XBox that it sells
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Various Slopfarms Propped up by Google News
Why can't Google News do better than this?
Links 25/10/2025: Two New Smokescreens for Scam Altman and ‘TikTok USA’ Remains in Limbo
Links for the day
Bad faith: can't change Debian Social Contract (DSC) without unanimous consent of every joint author
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Confirmed: Very Close Friend of Bill Gates and Microsoft's Biggest Patent Troll Nathan Myhrvold Flew the Lolita Express (a Gateway to Pedophilia), According to Bill Gates-Sponsored Seattle Times
There is no speculation or any "conspiracy theories" here;' those are verified facts
Gemini Links 25/10/2025: "The Highest Leader of The Global Civil Society Community", SSL Certificates Causing Bitrot
Links for the day
Links 25/10/2025: Target Layoffs and "Shutdown Sparks 85% Increase in US Government Cyberattacks"
Links for the day
"Big Data" Was a Big Lie
Remember "Big Data"? Remember "Data Scientists"...?
statCounter Has Been Broken for a Long Time
Considering the huge proportion of Web requests that come from LLM bots (more so this past year or two), statCounter may struggle to justify the operating costs
Techrights Anniversary Party on November 7th
Let us know if you need any accommodation-related arrangements
Trends That Must Alarm Microsoft and Mozilla
Expect Firefox to no longer be supported by various sites in the US
Why Microsoft Became the Layoffs Leader
The corporate media is projecting or signalling its own dishonesty when it tells us that Microsoft is a very "valuable" company while the data shows Microsoft is also a "market leader" in layoffs
Speaking for Ourselves and Letting the Facts Speak for Themselves
we've already published over 50,000 pages
For Second Time in a Day The Register MS Takes Money From Private Companies to Sell a Ponzi Scheme
Do not have empathy for those who have zero empathy towards you
IBM is Misleading IBM Shareholders
IBM is still all about vapourware and buzzwords
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 24, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 24, 2025