March 11, 2011 at 04:47The splendor and poverty of Chita Athena-Soft
“The Kontur-Extern system guarantees a stable, secure transmission of electronic reporting of organizations and entrepreneurs via the Internet to the regulatory authorities of Russia” (from the official website).
SKB Kontur, with its development Kontur-External, is one of the leaders in the Russian market for encrypting data and reporting transmitted between various state and private companies. This product has been used for a long time. And these many years, as long as the product exists, Kontur-External protects important, secret and dangerous data of its customers from encroachments. And they are on guard, protecting themselves from intruders by unique methods and encryption systems, promoting this brainchild through small firms. So, one of the "small firms" in the Trans-Baikal Territory is Athena-Soft, which connects the products of SKB Kontur. Of course, as the younger sister of her big brother, she provides all the protective equipment and all security guarantees, and clients can sleep peacefully. They are in good hands.
And in fact? Enchanting mess. There is no other word for what is happening in Athena-Soft - at least in the part that deals with the Trans-Baikal Territory, with Chita. Imagine the situation: in accounting, the Kontur-Extern suddenly breaks down, for no reason. And then the fun begins.
Did the Kontur-Extern fall? What to do, the situation is everyday, and it has happened before. We are trying to raise it. A shaman with some kind of internal repository does not rise. A shaman with certificates, it turns out that they work only in IE. We put another IE, fresher, the result is the same. We contact technical support. They fascinate us with the fact that IE is certainly needed in the sixth version, so delete all your other browsers, a step to the left, a step to the right is death. Deleted. Installed. Does not work. Technical support says: okay, we’ll write you a letter now, there will be a file. My colleague, who spoke with them, was waiting for a letter to his Google mail inbox. There is no letter and no, although they say in tech support that they sent it. He asks them what was in the letter. "There was an exe file in the zip archive." All clear. Google weeds out such letters. A colleague tells them: pack the file with the password, and pass the password in the letter, and Google will not know anything about the exe-file. Technical support response: “For us, this is an unusual practice, we have never worked with archives, but we will try to archive it.” Hurrah! They will try! And already the end of the working day, the accounting department is rebelling, my colleague from the Athena-Soft company and their product are “in complete delight”. Waiting, waiting. No letter. We call, they say that they did not succeed, but they will now give us the username and password to the mail.ru mailbox (!), Where we have a letter. Indeed, they sent username and password from the mailbox to mail.ru. A letter with a username and password fell into GMail’s spam box, because the “Company News” sheet was attached to this short information, the text of which was compiled using the best spam patterns. Anyway, we received the password and login (they coincided (!!)), we go into the box and see that besides us in the Trans-Baikal Territory, there are about a dozen organizations that communicate with Athena-Soft in the same way. (!!!) And for us there really is a letter! Security, security, privacy! The Kontur-Extern system guarantees.
PS A colleague asked them not to send company news anymore in letters, because they will be evil buratins if the letters do not break through spam filters. The answer was: “The news at the end of the letter is very useful and interesting to many of our subscribers. They do not contradict the specifics of our activities, they are not spam. ”
UPDATE
Athena-Soft employees showed themselves as people who accidentally fell into the IT sector, and moreover, into information security. I express to them a deep "Fi" for unprofessionalism.
Employees of SKB Kontur reacted very quickly and accurately, for which many human thanks to them!
Significant comment :
“My name is Igor Goldberg, I lead the Kontur-Extern project.
I would not like to write many letters, so I will try to say very briefly about the most important thing:
1. Thank you for the feedback. The situation with Athena-Soft is really outrageous (I know that the situation has a continuation, which we should not be proud of either). We will take action. I apologize to myself and the company for this disgrace.
2. We would like to understand in a little more detail the problem that you are writing about. If it doesn’t make it difficult, write me in a personal email in a nutshell what exactly didn’t work for you (if you know the number of your appeal registered in our registration system, please write it too). There, in PM, write me the name of the mailbox on the mail;) If you have any current unresolved problems - let me know about them.
3. Limitations with IE are not very simple, but surmountable, we are doing this. Maybe it’s not as fast as we would like, but nonetheless. ”
My answer :
“I am very glad that your company behaves like an adult. Thank you on behalf of our small telecom organization :)
By the way, we somewhat doubted the correctness of our actions, and now we doubt it. If we somehow hurt those who did not deserve it in your company, I also apologize. This does not apply to Athens-Soft, because its employees, with whom we had to communicate, simply amuse us with their unprofessionalism. (Example: “Why did you publish an article on Google ?!”)
I believe that my partner, who was faced with the problem, will be able to describe the situation better. I will give him your message. If you have a bug tracking system, we will certainly find it and use it if necessary. According to his stories, I realized that after some additional shamanism (after the showdown with Athena-Soft) I managed to do something. I think a partner will let you know about the problems, or we will inform you that everything is fine with us.
About IE - yes, it's like a splinter. I think you all understand that it is already rotting.
In any case, I wish you success and prosperity. ”
SKB Kontur, with its development Kontur-External, is one of the leaders in the Russian market for encrypting data and reporting transmitted between various state and private companies. This product has been used for a long time. And these many years, as long as the product exists, Kontur-External protects important, secret and dangerous data of its customers from encroachments. And they are on guard, protecting themselves from intruders by unique methods and encryption systems, promoting this brainchild through small firms. So, one of the "small firms" in the Trans-Baikal Territory is Athena-Soft, which connects the products of SKB Kontur. Of course, as the younger sister of her big brother, she provides all the protective equipment and all security guarantees, and clients can sleep peacefully. They are in good hands.
And in fact? Enchanting mess. There is no other word for what is happening in Athena-Soft - at least in the part that deals with the Trans-Baikal Territory, with Chita. Imagine the situation: in accounting, the Kontur-Extern suddenly breaks down, for no reason. And then the fun begins.
Did the Kontur-Extern fall? What to do, the situation is everyday, and it has happened before. We are trying to raise it. A shaman with some kind of internal repository does not rise. A shaman with certificates, it turns out that they work only in IE. We put another IE, fresher, the result is the same. We contact technical support. They fascinate us with the fact that IE is certainly needed in the sixth version, so delete all your other browsers, a step to the left, a step to the right is death. Deleted. Installed. Does not work. Technical support says: okay, we’ll write you a letter now, there will be a file. My colleague, who spoke with them, was waiting for a letter to his Google mail inbox. There is no letter and no, although they say in tech support that they sent it. He asks them what was in the letter. "There was an exe file in the zip archive." All clear. Google weeds out such letters. A colleague tells them: pack the file with the password, and pass the password in the letter, and Google will not know anything about the exe-file. Technical support response: “For us, this is an unusual practice, we have never worked with archives, but we will try to archive it.” Hurrah! They will try! And already the end of the working day, the accounting department is rebelling, my colleague from the Athena-Soft company and their product are “in complete delight”. Waiting, waiting. No letter. We call, they say that they did not succeed, but they will now give us the username and password to the mail.ru mailbox (!), Where we have a letter. Indeed, they sent username and password from the mailbox to mail.ru. A letter with a username and password fell into GMail’s spam box, because the “Company News” sheet was attached to this short information, the text of which was compiled using the best spam patterns. Anyway, we received the password and login (they coincided (!!)), we go into the box and see that besides us in the Trans-Baikal Territory, there are about a dozen organizations that communicate with Athena-Soft in the same way. (!!!) And for us there really is a letter! Security, security, privacy! The Kontur-Extern system guarantees.
PS A colleague asked them not to send company news anymore in letters, because they will be evil buratins if the letters do not break through spam filters. The answer was: “The news at the end of the letter is very useful and interesting to many of our subscribers. They do not contradict the specifics of our activities, they are not spam. ”
UPDATE
Athena-Soft employees showed themselves as people who accidentally fell into the IT sector, and moreover, into information security. I express to them a deep "Fi" for unprofessionalism.
Employees of SKB Kontur reacted very quickly and accurately, for which many human thanks to them!
Significant comment :
“My name is Igor Goldberg, I lead the Kontur-Extern project.
I would not like to write many letters, so I will try to say very briefly about the most important thing:
1. Thank you for the feedback. The situation with Athena-Soft is really outrageous (I know that the situation has a continuation, which we should not be proud of either). We will take action. I apologize to myself and the company for this disgrace.
2. We would like to understand in a little more detail the problem that you are writing about. If it doesn’t make it difficult, write me in a personal email in a nutshell what exactly didn’t work for you (if you know the number of your appeal registered in our registration system, please write it too). There, in PM, write me the name of the mailbox on the mail;) If you have any current unresolved problems - let me know about them.
3. Limitations with IE are not very simple, but surmountable, we are doing this. Maybe it’s not as fast as we would like, but nonetheless. ”
My answer :
“I am very glad that your company behaves like an adult. Thank you on behalf of our small telecom organization :)
By the way, we somewhat doubted the correctness of our actions, and now we doubt it. If we somehow hurt those who did not deserve it in your company, I also apologize. This does not apply to Athens-Soft, because its employees, with whom we had to communicate, simply amuse us with their unprofessionalism. (Example: “Why did you publish an article on Google ?!”)
I believe that my partner, who was faced with the problem, will be able to describe the situation better. I will give him your message. If you have a bug tracking system, we will certainly find it and use it if necessary. According to his stories, I realized that after some additional shamanism (after the showdown with Athena-Soft) I managed to do something. I think a partner will let you know about the problems, or we will inform you that everything is fine with us.
About IE - yes, it's like a splinter. I think you all understand that it is already rotting.
In any case, I wish you success and prosperity. ”