Maughan and Sons

How I became a computer professional, and why this site is here.

In 1995, after a few years in college and marrying my beautiful companion, I was attending college part time and working in a shipping center, as a box boy.   In my spare time I played M.U.D.D. games.  For those who aren’t familiar, it’s basically a text based multi-player online game.   Anyway, this interest in computer gaming led me into a whole new world of the Internet.  Many of you are familiar of the “Net” those days, HTML pages were so basic, and images made the page unusable.  Each week for several weeks I saw an advertisement for a computer intern at a large organization in the paper.  I finally decided to go for it, what the heck, my wife had the degree and good job, so why not try it out.

What a turning point.  It turned out, I loved computers.  I really liked helping people use computers and I continued to get very good.  That started my 14+ year love affair with computers.   Early on, I remember going to a Windows 95 seminar.  I was so excited, and there was supposed to be a lot of “insider” tips on how to work with Windows 95 and really “make” users productive.  Once there, joke after joke about dumb users, and tip after tip of how to “lock” the “dumb” users away from the system, I realized I had come to the wrong place.

I’ve met many an IT professional over the years now, and I can tell you there are at least 2 camps of thought on technology and it’s role in the workplace.  While many take the approach I found so offensive those many years ago, there are some of us, who believe strongly that information technology is just a tool, and that the more the tool is designed to do a job, the better the tool.  So hence, Information Security has to work, and has to be simple, in order to be Information Security That Works!!