Procurement built a budget forecast tool with hardcoded 2019 rates

“It's only employee data.”— Marco, Procurement

Reason:

Allegedly because someone said "GDPR" and the meeting went quiet. Already exported 179,626 rows to somebody's laptop.

Built by:

Marco, a field technician

Build time:

3 hours 15 minutes

Built with:

a Notion database with automations

Database:

two databases kept "mostly in sync"

Authentication:

the password is the company name backwards

Deployment:

last deployed 34 days ago

Responsible:

Plant Manager, who has never opened it

Documentation:

an Excel tab called Instructions

Security situation:

the data protection officer does not know it exists

Future disaster:

It will cause Security to ask "what application?".

Age: 44 days · originally expected to last 2 months · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 44 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 3 accidental connections, €95k per year, 2 departments depend on it.