I’ve just started at a company where I am supposed to, at the request of the company president, document our current network infrastructure, evaluate it then connect it to the corporate WAN. I have no problem doing that except that the IT department (two people) won’t give me the access passwords to the Lan\Wan hardware, none of it, even after a direct request from the president to do so. I’m really at a loss as to what to do. I was originally hired to work with a non-IT department to get their computer-related problems taken care of with the understanding that after I complete my work with that department that I would take over the lead position in the IT department (the previous lead IT person had left about a month previous to my being hired). The reason I was originally hired into this department was the perceived lack of support from the IT department. The only response the IT department has given the president of the division is that they respectfully disagree when he tellsthem that I need unrestricted access to the network. If they get fired or quit then the passwords go with them (the entire network, servers, routers, switches) and I am stuck. I’ve never heard of a situation such as this and was wondering if anyone else had and what they did to try to rectify it? I don’t mind starting the department with my own people from scratch if that is what is necessary but I need those passwords first.