This pilot fish is an engineer setting up control systems for power plants, and one day he has a disagreement with an IT manager at one of his clients. Topic: complex passwords. There’s a push on throughout the IT world to make passwords more complex.

But fish’s point is that that advice isn’t valid when you have an air gap between the control systems and any other network. In fact, fish tells the manager, when it comes to internal hacking, complex passwords are more risky than no password at all because people never remember complex passwords and have to write then down on sticky notes. The manager says that would never happen at his plant — people know better.

So fish leads the manager to a random desk and flips the keyboard over — where he finds a sticky note with a password written on it.

Keep it simple for Sharky, and send your true tales of IT life to sharky@computerworld.com. You can also subscribe to the Daily Shark Newsletter.