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Just about every business and every government agency these days is worried about evildoers hacking into computer systems. Most recently, the Department of Agriculture said that a hacker may have stolen personal information for about 26,000 current and former employees.

So supervisors have been ordering employees to take stupefyingly dull security training. Naturally, employees do their best to weasel out.

But the Fish and Wildlife Service is wise to those malingerers, according to an e-mail a while back from David B. Smith , chief information security officer, to regional officials about dealing with waivers.

"This year's mandatory annual IT security awareness training has begun with Region 1 being the first to start," Smith instructed. "I am asking the RITSMs [Regional Information Technology Security Managers] to be the POCs [Points of Contact] for providing me with lists of personnel who require waivers from the training and to provide those lists to me every Monday."

The only acceptable reasons for waivers, he said, were:

? Annual leave.

? Medical leave.

? Military leave.

? Retired.

? No access to computers.

? Transferred.

? Resigned/terminated.

? Deceased.

"The last item may seem odd," Smith wrote, "but last year we had a few cases where we spent a fair amount of time and effort trying to find out the status of some personnel, only to find out they were deceased."

Make sure supervisors provide their approvals for any waivers, Smith added.

"Please keep in mind, a waiver is only good until the person returns to duty."

So some waivers are eternal?