Always wondered about this

first post and I still have PTSD about this job

This happened in 2001. I worked as an IT Manager for Z-corp, a multi-level marketing company providing internet education and website hosting services. Mostly we made money by selling you a $149 yearly program that automatically renews. The vast majority of the $149 was used to pay the people above you in your up-line. We also taught you how to sign up people in your down line so you could make money. The important part is the annual renewal which would have made millionaires out of a large number of people.

At any rate, Z-corp was run by a father , Daddy, and his sons who were all former construction workers and lived a couple time zones later than me. They woke up and started the day by yelling at the person most likely to need a jumpstart. I typically worked 18 hour days so sleep was precious. 5am phone calls with someone yelling at me were common.

One fine morning at 5am, Daddy calls to tell me the website is down. I stumble out of bed and drive to the data center, logon and see the last person to modify the production files was his son, Richard. I call Daddy back and tell him his kid took down the site, then revert all the changes and delete Richard's access. Walking out of the data center, Daddy calls back that we can't process credit cards. I walk back in and check our connection to the credit card processor, yep, its down. So I call their customer support line, who tells me Richard called them several hours ago and violated the contract. Richard knows he screwed up bad so has turned off all his phones and moved into a hotel thinking no one would find him.

A mad scramble to find a new processor happens and we change over to using the new company. We were down for 2 days. No sales. No money. No payouts.

Daddy calls our original processor and gets them to reinstate us as long as we sign a new contract. The new contract requires SSL to enabled on the credit card pages (the little "lock" you see on every page) and credit card information is to be encrypted in the database.

We have a team meeting to discuss implementation details. Our development team says it will take a full rewrite and months to change the software to encrypt the credit card information. I say we can implement a Null Encryption process in the database that doesn't require a software rewrite. Daddy is fully onboard with a quick solution and says do it. Doesn't ask for details.

I setup the database job and run the first update manually verifying everything works correctly. And go back to fixing all the other stuff that broke.

Daddy calls back to say the original credit card processor wants to audit our fixes before enabling our account again. I invite them to the data center to personally check the server. They ask about our innovative encryption solution. I say its easier to show than describe. I run the tests showing no credit card data is present. They ask to see the data base code.

where credit card data present, set to NULL

It runs every night at midnight.

Technically, I had Null encrypted the data. That it was no longer accessible wasn't relevant. The audit passed and we were back in business.

Jan 3rd 2002, I had finally had enough of Z-corp. No raises, no overtime, no comp time, paychecks always late, no bonus, no sleep, etc. I reset my company phone and low level formatted my computer and quit. 6 days later, the first annual renewal failed because credit card data was Null.

Z-corp closed their doors permanently not long after.

Update 1: Removing the credit card data nightly kept the company in compliance with the credit card processor. When the annual renewal came due, there was no credit card data to process the renewal.

In a SQL database, NULL is the absence of a value. A value is data (number, characters, images, spaces, etc).

Technically, we were already using a Null Encryption scheme as there was no encryption (the encryption scheme was not set).

FTC investigated Z-corp and handed out indictments.

I left for other reasons. Mostly I had found another job that didn't involve an angry person waking me up at 5am to clean up another mess. There was no one cross-trained for my job because I kept taking their punishment every day and no one thought I would actually quit. Wiping my phone and computer was childish...an angry person had just vented at me, they were still yelling when my computer wiped and when I pulled the battery from my phone.