Customer Support built something with customer data and no permissions

“It's basically a spreadsheet with buttons.”— Jens, Customer Support

Reason:

Allegedly because two teams disagreed about a column name for 8 weeks. Already exported 1,211 rows to somebody's laptop.

Built by:

Jens, a product owner

Build time:

2 hours 46 minutes

Built with:

a no-code builder on a personal account

Database:

an SQLite file called app_final_2.db

Authentication:

a URL 91 characters long, which counts as security

Deployment:

deployed 56 minutes before the builder went on holiday

Responsible:

Jens, who left 18 months ago

Documentation:

a Confluence page marked "draft", last edited 141 days ago

Security situation:

it is indexed by Google. All of it.

Future disaster:

It will break the day Jens changes their password.

Age: 33 days · originally expected to last 7 days · 2 owners so far · last meaningful change 33 days ago · original builder left 54 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 2 departments depend on it, the builder has left, alive 5x longer than intended.