RGE:
RGE: (Resume Generating Event) – An event that forces a person, or the persons manger to generate an updated resume.An RGE is something most of us don't want to experience, at least not too often. RGEs are often followed by changes in income, housing, marital status, etc.
HGE:
HGE: (Headline Generating Event) – An event that causes news reporters to write stories and generate headlines.HGEs can be either positive or negative, depending on the causes and effects of the event, although with the exception of dot-com startups, most IT initiated HGEs are negative events related to system or project failures of some sort.
HGEs are often followed by RGEs.
Obviously a goal of system mangers, security people and IT folks in general is to make sure that that acronyms like the above don’t show up unexpectedly. Those of us in public service are particularly sensitive to HGEs. There are not too many circumstances where public service IT organizations can generate positive headlines. Odds are that if there are headlines, they are not good. There is no incentive for the local news broadcast to begin with a segment on your shiny and fast new servers or your four nine’s of application uptime.
We spend a lot of time analyzing risk in security decisions, system designs, deployments and upgrades. If we do it right, we can design, build, manage and maintain systems that meet user/customer requirements while minimizing the probability of triggering an HGE and the follow on RGEs.
And if we are REALLY doing it right, we'll have fun while we are doing it.
