Re: We have a firewall (was Re: Pakistan government orders ISPservice level agreement)

["Christopher L. Morrow" <chris () UU NET>]

On Wed, 7 May 2003, Leo Bicknell wrote:

> In a message written on Wed, May 07, 2003 at 05:37:18AM +0000, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:
> > Calling the NOC, as I said before (which you most likely actually called
> > the customer service number which isn't the NOC), is not productive
> > because no one in the NOC (or customer service group) has anyway to
>
> This is not a knock on UUNet specifically, but does get to the real
> problem.  With many large providers it's not that the abuse/security
> group is unresponsive, it's that you can't figure out how to contact
> them, and the catch-all published numbers don't work.  This is doubly
> true when the company has gone to an IVR system, almost none of which
> have the "I'm not a customer but I want to alert you to something
> that's real important" option.

There is the issue of what to do with this data also :( And filtering out
the 'kook' calls (as the abuse team calls them) from 'real' calls. :( This
is a significant nut to crack, in a smaller ISP where 1-5 (or some
'manageable number') does 'all that is important' things are quite
different than in a multinational multithousand person company. Also,
'important' takes on different meanings in this scale also.

> I think all companies that have separated their customer/peer facing
> support into multiple groups need more training on how to redirect the
> call to the right group when the wrong group receives it in the first
> place.  Most often the person answering the phone doesn't know the
> right place to redirect the call, so it appears to just be an unhelpful
> support system.

This is, at UUNET, a continuing education process, as people come/go/reorg
the messages get repeated up and down the pike... Sometimes we (me) forget
to get my important messages out :( So, for 'security' at UUNET I suppose
blame me, mostly.