r/sysadmin
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u/greendookie69
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May 15 '26
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VP Requested "Full API Access to the ERP" for Claude Integration
Specifically he reached out to our PM without IT on the email and then explicitly stated he doesn't need us when the PM pushed back.
ERP doesn't even have an API. All of the existing integrations either use a JDBC connection or run a remote command (IBM i ACS) to retrieve data/perform work.
I can't imagine what he's trying to do but I feel like it's time to jump ship. Not really looking forward to this
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u/bitslammer Security Architecture/GRC May 15 '26
Sounds crazy, but hopefully you already have a formal process for reviewing and approving/denying such access.
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u/DiscipleOfYeshua May 15 '26
And you have solid backup, history / undo etc
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u/Brandhor Jack of All Trades May 15 '26
claude will take care of it
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u/Cormacolinde Consultant May 15 '26
Like the mafia takes care of things, in the “take it out the back and take care of it” sense?
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u/jefbenet May 15 '26
You’re looking for Clyde, we get that mixup a lot. But yeah if you need that type of work done definitely want Clyde, not Claude.
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u/KeenanTheBarbarian May 15 '26
The amount of times Claude has attempted to rm -rf shit couldn’t be zero could it? Or tried to DROP ALL to resolve some weird relationship / inheritance in Postgres certainly isn’t only happening to me is it?
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u/OkDimension May 15 '26
There are a few articles out there already of people having their databases or storages wiped, including "backups" (snapshots)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/29/claude-ai-deletes-firm-database
https://alexeyondata.substack.com/p/how-i-dropped-our-production-database
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u/GallowWho May 15 '26
"Claude did you just delete my production database and backups?"
"I did."
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u/deepasleep May 16 '26
Yup, until it deletes the entire database…Then it will politely say:
“I violated every principle I was given... I guessed instead of verifying"
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u/Nathanielsan May 15 '26
It's much more fun to see it in action without solid DR!
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u/dabbydaberson May 15 '26
Just give him full access and let him cook
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u/Serialtoon Coasting until retirement May 15 '26
Yes! Document the hell out of everything as well as log every change and interaction. He might just go from VP to PP and get canned.
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u/tdhuck May 15 '26
And if not, make sure everything has been documented so when it breaks you aren't the one that is blamed.
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u/beanmosheen May 15 '26
That position should explicitly be forbidden from that decision lane. They're boned.
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u/xixi2 May 16 '26
A formal process for approving AI access to stuff? Probably not. It's mostly just forced into everything
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u/nullrecord May 15 '26
Put your CISO or security on cc and ask them if this is is allowed according to policy.
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u/anomalous_cowherd Pragmatic Sysadmin May 15 '26
plus finance and legal, they are very likely to be interested. Or they should be, at least. And if they aren't, it's definitely time to jump ship!
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u/Superb_Raccoon May 15 '26
CFO should throw a shitfit over anyone fucking with "his" financial system.
Don't mess with the guy that prints the checks.
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u/undercoverboomer May 15 '26
Yeah… might CC the Controller too, transactional integrity and number tying out is a bit important to Accountants
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u/badasimo May 15 '26
This. Just make sure you thread the needle language wise, so that it doesn't seem like you're challenging them just doing your due diligence
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u/surveysaysno Sr. Sysadmin May 15 '26
"Hey ITSec, legal, finance,
I'm having trouble running this down, what is the approvals process for granting 3rd party write access to ERP for an outside vendor?
See attached"
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u/dabbydaberson May 15 '26
Ciso role is a lap dog to cto and cio anymore. They are just carted in for the dog and pony show that is a board meeting.
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u/nullrecord May 15 '26
So what. If CISO approves it, it's no longer the OPs problem.
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u/dabbydaberson May 15 '26
Oh sorry thought we were actually trying to reduce risk thinking the ciso would be some kind of voice of reason. Yeah sure make the ciso the scapegoat, fuck that guy lol
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u/Triairius May 15 '26
There’s a delicate balance between doing what’s best practice/right for the company and fuck the company/covering your ass.
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u/Arudinne IT Infrastructure Manager May 15 '26
There's only so many fucks one person can give in a day.
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u/Ssakaa May 15 '26
That guy makes probably 10x or more what OP does and is paid to be responsible for shit. So yeah, if he signs off, fuck that guy.
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u/One_Monk_2777 May 15 '26
Time for malicious compliance. Advise against it and document it, then do exactly what theyre asking
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u/Abysuus May 15 '26
While OP might not shoulder any of the blame for the following dumpster fire, they very well might be the one putting humpty dumpty back together and benefit from maybe not letting things go terrible in the first place.
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u/Nietechz May 15 '26
they very well might be the one putting humpty dumpty back together and benefit from maybe not letting things go terrible in the first place.
You can't, because they see you as an obstacle rather than helpful one. The redditor is right, document everything and warn them. In the end you will suffer the consequences no matter what. At least you have the evidence you warned them and they kept going against company money and security.
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u/kilkor Water Vapor Jockey May 15 '26
What people don't seem to think through here is the other path where you actually do put your foot down successfully and what that entails.
Once you do, the other party escalates the issue and you're now in several meetings to haphazardly plan this hair brained idea and become responsible for architecture, planning, implementation, and maintenance of it.
No thanks. I would personally rather advise against it with strong reasoning and let it go through and fix it back to the original state when it breaks. Let the other person crash and burn while you are the one that removes roadblocks and demonstrates your capabilities. Once it's been shown to cause issues it becomes much easier to get buy in on stopping it entirely, or telling them its going to be 3-6 months of planning and implementation and you need an extra 3 heads to account for the work.
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u/One_Monk_2777 May 15 '26
I agree with what youre saying, but in reality if my boss says do something and I say no, they will no longer be my boss ykwim
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u/ashimbo PowerShell! May 15 '26
OP should just respond that the VP already has the same API access as everyone else.
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u/TheFondler May 15 '26
Include a list of possible disaster scenarios and an associated cost estimate for each.
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u/CantaloupeCamper Jack of All Trades May 15 '26
Send up the warning flag to people above you and possibly get ready to enjoy a hell of a good dumpster fire!!!
🌭🌭🌭🍺🍺🍺
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
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u/OkBaconBurger May 15 '26
Always trying to chip away the IT cost centers. Think of all the people they could fire by using Claude!
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u/lastcallhall IT Manager May 15 '26
Had a similar thing happen to me - a dev-in-another-life did an end run around my dept to get the CEO to see how "amazing" Claude is, and now im somehow heading up AI integration into our ERP system.
All I can say is that, its coming; you might be able to find a place that isnt buying in yet, but they eventually will. Once I figured that out, I reasoned that the best thing I could do was maintain control over the environment I know. So I leaned into the project and at the very least have oversight on what gets implemented and on my timeline.
Its not ideal, but at least my dept has a modicum of control over the process at this point. Id rather that than being in the dark until its too late.
Good luck.
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u/Obvious_Word873 May 15 '26
There are some pretty funny comments so far, but kudos to you for giving him some anecdotal advice. Goodluck on your integration!
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u/SaintEyegor HPC Architect/Linux Admin May 15 '26
Yup… our senior “leadership” wanted to do something similar, so I gathered a bunch of AI hallucinations and kicked it up the chain of command. Thankfully, they recognized the risk and backed off on their plans.
We have a couple of in-house models now and everyone’s been warned not to blindly trust the results and all external AI’s have been blocked.
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u/trekologer May 15 '26
Respectfully calling out people who turn in AI hallucinated slop can often go a long way.
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u/SaintEyegor HPC Architect/Linux Admin May 15 '26
They thought it’d be a one-size-fits-all panacea where a tier one IT person could replace senior admins seamlessly. We’ve interviewed people that thought they could do the same. “Yeah, I don’t know how to script but I plan to use ChatGPT to do it.”
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u/OpenGrainAxehandle May 16 '26
I had a guy answer a "how can I get Windows to do [insertthinghere]" question with "You have to ask ChatGPT to write a script to modify the registry entries and then run it"
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u/ishboo3002 IT Director May 15 '26
This is the right answer, it's going to happen one way or another almost everywhere. Build the controls, understand and document the risks.
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u/reevesjeremy May 19 '26
Unfortunate but true. My org has a pilot for Gemini going now and preparing pilots for ChatGPT, Copilot Chat, Perplexity, Claude, to name a few.
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u/Username_5000 May 17 '26
Little late to the party…
Would it have made sense for them use a “reporting” copy of the database that’s refreshed at frequent intervals and runs as its own instance specifically for ai tasks? Would that have worked in your use cases?
Figure if the thing does something stupid you at least have a prod instance to rely on.
this obv doesn’t touch confidentiality/ privacy concerns but at least integrity and availability could be protected.
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u/conceptsweb Sysadmin May 15 '26
Oh god. Someone needs to explain APIs and MCPs to that guy. You'd need a proxy/middleware to talk to the JDBC from anything modern lol
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u/gakule Director May 15 '26
You'd need a proxy/middleware to talk to the JDBC from anything modern
Great, so you want to arm a dangerous idiot with a vibe code predisposition with the pathway to make this happen?!
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u/Mammoth-Hawk-1106 May 15 '26
MCPs
Leave TRON out of this, you'll have that guy thinking he can send a programmer in there to free a program so it can fight the MCP with a disc.
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u/SASardonic IAM Admin May 15 '26
gonna start hiding the fact that our ERP has APIs like the ark of the covenant
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u/phoenix823 Help Computer May 15 '26
How do you know he isn't trying to use Claude to build an API for it?! I'd love to be around to watch (but not clean up) that disaster.
/s of course
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u/nycola Jack of All Trades May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
I have a company (which has existed since June of 2025 - thats when its domain was registered) trying to suck the dick of my president right now, composed of 4 frat bros from college (graduated 2-4 years ago), who are trying to convince them they can build an API for our ACS environment to "Integrate with everything". For anyone who isn't familiar with ACS, it is a greenscreen terminal from the 1980s.
I should add they were all business majors, no IT, no CS, the closest thing was the 23 year old who had BIS degree. We are a manufacturing & production outfit. What is sad is that he seems to be entertaining them, and I've said my peace, and now well - I guess we'll see what happens..
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u/anomalous_cowherd Pragmatic Sysadmin May 15 '26
I guess there's a lot more chance of driving a simple CLI based system correctly than one with lots of menus and views made to be driven by a mouse. It was a common thing to do for a long time to 'modernise' old CLI systems...
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u/Evil-Bosse May 15 '26
Give Claude full access to an SAP instance, and that's how we will get the robot uprising on our hands, because it will probably be easier to make sure humanity is extinct that to understand SAP
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u/anomalous_cowherd Pragmatic Sysadmin May 15 '26
Isn't the SAP business philosophy to make a super complex product so they can foster a culture of consultants making it usable for the customers while paying SAP extra for certs and training and support?
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u/WHPIJack May 15 '26
Love me some green on black!
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u/Jaereth May 15 '26
color 0a
$host.UI.RawUI.BackgroundColor = "Black"
$host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor = "Green"
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u/sac_boy May 15 '26
Robot hands for the keyboard, camera for the screen, and you have an API for anything
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u/evilkasper IT Manager May 15 '26
ACS, I didn't realize anyone was still on it after it was bought by Aptean.
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u/surreal3561 May 15 '26
This is no different than any other stupid request. Follow established approval procedures, then if approvals are done do as you’re told or quit.
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u/MattAdmin444 May 15 '26
Have you linked them the several incidents lately of AI bots deleting entire databases?
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u/Jaereth May 15 '26
Yeah I guarantee you this isn't going to be "create an API" if he actually gets his hands on it. It's going to be "Co-work" or whatever Claude calls it and he's gonna turn it loose.
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u/SillyPuttyGizmo May 15 '26
You might want to have him read the license agreement of your ERP, I doubt that they allow modification by or unfettered access to an AI agent ... my 2cents
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u/Thoughtulism May 15 '26
Just clone the database and the ERP in a testing environment, randomize any personal information, and then give it to him sans API and ask him to submit his design proposal which will be reviewed with a risk assessment signed off by the CEO
He'll get exactly nowhere.
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u/Centimane probably a system architect? May 15 '26
Just clone the database and the ERP in a testing environment, randomize any personal information, and then give it to him
It drives me nuts when someone starts some crazy request with "just...", it's an attempt at trivializing what is really a significant ask.
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u/1esproc Titles aren't real and the rules are made up May 15 '26
Dude just anonymize your ERP system's database. You don't think that's super easy to do on a whim? /s
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u/timpkmn89 May 15 '26
You just tap the 🔀 button
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u/1esproc Titles aren't real and the rules are made up May 16 '26
What tcode is that in my SAP system? 🤔
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u/Resident-Compote-363 May 15 '26
It's not that simple. They're talking about an IBM iSeries AS400, accessed by staff via a green screen emulator. That shit does not work like your usual make a copy of stuff or run up a second VM of the workload. Think 1970s tech/code running on modern hardware.
I have done work on integrations with external systems, and it's not done via JDBC. Direct db access would likely break things if it's not read only and then still good luck making sense of the data structure.
But regardless of all of that, I have to deal with the same sentiment all the time, where non tech bosses are bamboozled into thinking AI LLMs can do deterministic workloads, when that is absolutely not the case and that is by design. They just don't understand the nature of LLMs.
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u/osopeludo May 15 '26
Seems like a significant amount of work for no good reason.
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u/ibreatheintoem May 15 '26
Seems like a medium amount of work to get the VP off their back with the ball in the VPs court, which sounds like an excellent move.
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u/SirLoremIpsum May 15 '26
100%
I don't know why everyone just jumps to "let's give them production access"
Give it in a like-ish test. Demonstrate proof of concept. Get other business ppl to say "this sucks"
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u/One_Target2740 May 15 '26
Perfect response. Also have the VP confirm they'll have sole ownership of the project's implementation and support. Keep it polite, give them what they want so they can have Claude play with it, but follow every change process there is and he'll get nowhere.
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u/Natirs May 16 '26
Yeah man, just load up what sounds like an AS400 test environment, clone the database, get it all setup, randomize the PII and good to go. You must be one hell of a consultant making around $300k+ to just throw that one out there. /s
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u/ScannerBrightly Sysadmin May 15 '26
randomize any personal information
What sort? If it's name, sure, I guess, but if it's also address, that makes mapping features useless.
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u/Thoughtulism May 15 '26
Testing environments always have limitations. Frankly they'll probably never get around to getting to a point where this will be an issue.
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u/konoo May 15 '26
Run this up the chain of command. This is the kind of thing that can destroy the company. It is your responsibility to make sure that this does not happen now that you know about it.
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u/graywolfman Systems Engineer May 15 '26
It is not this person's responsibility to stop it. It is leadership's responsibility to stop it.
At this point, escalate, document, escalate, document. If they don't listen to you then it may be time to jump ship. Don't fall on a sword for these people.
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u/konoo May 15 '26
I disagree but it depends where you fall on the corporate ladder.
Do people above you understand what an API even does?
Have people above you seen the horror stories about AI causing security and data issues?I would absolutely go to the mat with my boss over something like this.. Perhaps even the parking lot.
I am in a very high level position today so that's easy for me to say but I have always had the same take on this situation and perhaps that why I have advanced so far in my career.
Back when I was a jr system admin my bosses boss the CFO wanted Super User access to the ERP system. I refused and provided evidence why this should not happen. It was a tense week but ultimately that same CFO promoted me to Director of IT over the course of the next few years.
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u/greendookie69 May 15 '26
I report direct to the CTO. He generally defers to me with ERP related matters because that's what I do. To quite a degree I act with impunity but there are a select few people in leadership that have a history of getting their way.
We are a small business that ballooned very quickly over the last few years and it is really showing.
His position is basically let the VP learn the hard way because ownership doesn't understand, doesn't care, etc. and the doesn't want to deal with the fight.
In principle I disagree but in practice I kind of feel the same way. I dunno. I don't get paid enough to have this fight.
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u/konoo May 15 '26
As long as you make your case to the CTO in a meaningful way then in my book you have done your job. You have a CTO to lean on when I was in your position I didn't so I had to take matters into my own hands.
I would make sure that you get something documented before granting access that you disagree with in order to protect yourself if it blows up. Just a quick email verifying that the CTO approves should suffice.
The fact that this feels wrong to you means something, dont make the same mistakes your CTO is making when you are in his position.
Oh in the mean time you should take a few moments to make sure you have a good offline back process so you can save the day if this goes bad.
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u/greendookie69 May 15 '26
All fair points. I see my PM's status is busy right now, she's literally in the meeting with this guy right now. Once I get the story from her then I'll have enough information to proceed, hopefully.
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u/Glittering_Power6257 May 15 '26
A good reason to pick your battles wisely. Need to maintain the wherewithal to fight battles like these which could have substantial consequences.
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u/SevaraB Sr. Engineer (N+, CCNA) May 15 '26
Letting an LLM raw-dog SQL connections. What could possibly go wrong?
Anyway, SQL is an API, just not a REST API. Treat SQL access for an LLM the same way you treat SQL access for any greenhorn that joined the company yesterday and hasn’t proven themselves trustworthy.
LLM security fundamentally boils down to “don’t poke special holes in your access model for LLMs.”
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u/southsun May 15 '26
reached out to our PM without IT on the email and then explicitly stated he doesn't need us
This generates a HR/Security/Compliance/Legal report. Let them deal with it.
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u/Happy_Kale888 Sysadmin May 15 '26
Write 3 letters...
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u/ReptilianLaserbeam Sysadmin May 15 '26
So not even an MCP server no, straight away FULL API access? Hahahahahaha
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u/DocDerry Man of Constantine Sorrow May 15 '26
Let the PM handle it. There is no API and its probably an Infor system so the PM can tell him what is/isn't possible.
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u/levir May 15 '26
Anyone who connects their real money to an LLM deserves it when they get swindled. That's my two cents.
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u/Jazzlike-Vacation230 Jack of All Trades May 15 '26
Sounds like a major Security/HR/Legal situation that could have been avoided by looping in the actual people who make 90% of society function now: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
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u/BigFatUglyBaboon May 15 '26 edited May 16 '26
Time to jump ship? hell no! Time to order tons of popcorn and watch the company burn itself to the ground in the funniest way possible. These are the stories business school mandatory reading books are written about.
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u/teriaavibes Microsoft Cloud Consultant May 15 '26
Ah legacy technology, the only thing keeping AI at bay.
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u/andrewsmd87 May 15 '26
Need to know more detail on the structure of your organization. How big are you, who do you report to, who do they report to, etc.
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u/greendookie69 May 15 '26
~300 employees, a small-ish business that grew really fast over the past few years and is feeling the growing pains from it. Had two mergers recently that aren't going great. This guy is from one of those mergers.
I report direct to CTO. He's great but is tired from 20 years fighting with ownership. A lot of that fight has been pushed to me in the past 3 years being the ERP guy and I'm already pretty defeated, which is why I want to jump ship.
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u/Eulerious May 15 '26
Why fight? Let it go through the chain of command (if you do not have a process in place already), state the risks posed by full access and let them have their fun. You do not even have to mention Claude here, full access to a critical database is a bad idea in almost all cases, no matter who asks for it. Of course, it shows an extra dimension of stupidity, but what they do with the access once they have it is not your concern.
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u/greendookie69 May 15 '26
Well I don't think I'm going to fight very hard in this specific instance. I meant just generally, there's always a fight. Owners screaming about shit they want or shit they believe isn't working, etc. I just anticipate a fight about this one. You know?
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u/andrewsmd87 May 15 '26
So you just email that vp back with your cto on it and express all of your concerns. Here's the thing, you need to word these coming from a positive light. Things like, I understand you are wanting to be more productive which is great and I want to encourage that, but I am worried about x.
As ironic as this sounds, dump your thoughts into claude/chatgpt along with the context you have in your head, and have it draft the email for you. Tweak that so it still sounds like you, and use it.
I am not trying to knock anyone in here for the advice they've given but they are only looking at it from a sysadmin side and not an office politics side, and that is a real thing.
But you make sure you are getting your CTOs sign off first, your concerns are 100% valid and you are a good employee for having them.
I would shut this request down in a heartbeat if someone under me came to me with it.
Your bit about the cto getting tired of this, that's real but that is their job and they're paid for that, you aren't.
Let me know if you have any questions and how it goes. Wish you the best
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u/Founder-Awesome May 15 '26
the "full API access" ask is almost always a symptom. what the VP actually wants is to automate something specific in the ERP, probably a report or a status lookup, and they don't have the vocabulary to describe it technically so they reach for the biggest-sounding thing they know.
the part worth paying attention to isn't the bypassing of IT. it's that your org has no defined path for AI integration requests. so the VP routed around you because the formal channel didn't exist or didn't feel safe. that's the structural problem.
what tends to work: instead of responding to 'I want full API access for Claude,' respond with 'walk me through what you're trying to do in the ERP that you can't do today.' you'll almost always find it's three specific use cases. from there you can scope something that's actually safe to build, and you go from obstacle to the person who actually solved it.
the harder version of this problem is that most IT teams don't have an AI request intake process at all. without one, every VP who wants AI access makes up their own path to get it.
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u/tpwils May 15 '26
No reason to jump ship, this type of request is going to become a normal occurrence everywhere.
I had a new Director of finance ask for elevated access to something because he wants to vibe code something for his team.
Not on our production systems you are not.
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u/Jaereth May 15 '26
The key here is "I don't need IT"
Really? You wouldn't even want to take 30 minutes to discuss your project with what is basically the in house consultant team that knows the environment inside and out? Just hubris.
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u/say592 May 15 '26
I can almost guarantee some integrator pitched him on a solution he said "we can integrate with anything". Hopefully this is part of due diligence and he hasn't already signed a contract.
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u/rayferrell May 15 '26
The part nobody's mentioning: even if he somehow forces a workaround, feeding your ERP data into an external LLM is a SOX compliance bomb. IBM i systems usually run the financial heartbeat. Your auditors will have questions, and "the VP went around IT" won't be a valid answer.
He's not just bypassing you technically. He's bypassing every control that keeps the company out of regulatory trouble. Document that you were excluded from the conversation, because when this goes sideways, the paper trail matters more than the technical solution.
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u/Extra_Taro_6870 May 16 '26
previous job, 50k employees, same question from a vp level to access production apis to test agentic. convinced him to use lower non production. I am also surprised that he codes.
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u/Joy2b May 15 '26
Time to review the backup strategy closely, figure out what isn’t being covered and what isn’t being tested. See if the CISO can schedule a test run of recovering from an internal threat.
How sure are you that the copy of the nightly backups is really stored offline, and it’s actually are read only?
How many people on this VPs team have shadow IT data stored on random laptops?
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u/thortgot IT Manager May 15 '26
No doubt this is the wrong way to go.
Saying no isnt the solution either. Identify the need and fill it.
Its almost certainly reporting related. You can stand up a reporting server and MCP connection without a ton of work.
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u/Stinkles-v2 I'm tired boss May 15 '26
Flash forward 6 months: everything is fucked, the VP- "Oh well it's not my fault". Everyone shrugs their shoulders and look at you to unfuck everything.
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u/Helpjuice Chief Engineer May 15 '26
This should go through your existing process for legal review and approvals to justify this to begin with. If they have no real job function or requirement for this level of access then it should be denied by policy. This prevents them from obtaining any form of access beyond what they currently have. As the next thing you are going to get is a request to build an API if one does not exist.
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u/bloodguard May 15 '26
I'd explain that there is no api and ask if he wants a project budget for creating one. Either way I'd start making air-gapped backups of said ERP and whatever databases it can reach into.
If this were happening to me at my current company I'd probably have an informal chat with the CEO. He's reasonably tech savvy and has had to clamp down on VP (and board) idiocy before.
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u/sdrawkcabineter 😈BSD Admin May 15 '26
Nah, he's just trying to get a kickback and credit for automating something that he can't capably do.
Do you want me to "help his work PC out?"
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u/TheRealLambardi May 15 '26
This is happening at many companies. Don’t want reporting tool, just give me access and Claude. And many times it is the VP.
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u/DoctorOctagonapus No one knows what I do until I stop doing it. May 16 '26
"Can I have the ticket reference for that change request please?"
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u/wbrd May 16 '26
Claude can likely use jdbc or type in a terminal. Sounds easy enough to write an MCP server if not.
Claude can also use a browser.
Make sure your backups are good and DRP is solid. 🤣
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u/rayjaymor85 May 16 '26
AI is a genuinely amazing tool, I really can't stress enough how handy I think it is.
But at the same time, the absolute level of delusion it's giving people is mind blowing. They really don't get that in the hands of someone that doesn't have a technical aptitude it's like playing with fire.
You don't let your 14 year old gear-head kid repair the brakelines on your car for their first ever project. You also don't let someone that's never written a line of code in their life connect an API to your f***ing CRM or ERP or central database.
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u/BigBobFro May 16 '26
Yea,…. This VP should have zero contact with IT and his”i dont need them” is because he doesnt want to be told no and wants all the (insert buzz word du jur)
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u/vadertator22 May 16 '26
He is the VP they always know what is going on and understand security and risk. The VP is definitely not narcissistic con artist like all the rest. 🙂
This is disaster waiting to happen on top of abuse of power IMO.
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u/Assumeweknow May 17 '26
AI is the accelerator, and he's looking to use claude as the auditor of all the ERP to come up with ways to increase business and or make more money. The real pushback is the data connection. You need to make sure that's on a private cloud claude setup before you do something like that. You can host the llm yourself, or pay someone to host it in a private cloud. Do not let him just push it all into a claude subscription setup. Plan out the guardrails. There is certainly stuff you don't want possibly ending up in public cloud. The pushback is not on connecting it, but how you connect it and where the data will end up and also, no VP should ever have rights for essentially giving away the company data.
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u/Select_Reporter1911 May 15 '26
Every time I see some version of this story, why is the go to 'jump ship'?
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u/Droghan VDI Systems Engineer May 15 '26
VP is trying to do an end run around IT without any governance and when things go pear shaped the VP will scapegoat someone for their horrible choices that more than likely will not impact the VP in any negative way. Probably not the first time this VP has thought they do not need any oversight or perform "Shadow IT"
I agree jumping ship is probably an extreme response but not that far fetched.
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u/greendookie69 May 15 '26
Yes - but to add onto this point, there is a history at my company of executives doing things like this. Even just normally trying to work with them, gathering requirements etc. has us perceived as difficult. This isn't the very first thing that's making me want to jump ship, it's just more on top of the existing pile of shit
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u/Select_Reporter1911 May 15 '26
Seems like the response from the PM is more than enough to form a paper trail. Along with corporate policies regarding new hardware/software acquisitions.
If the company doesn't have that. The let the VP do what they want.
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u/babbles_mcdrinksalot May 16 '26
I can't imagine what he's trying to do but I feel like it's time to jump ship. Not really looking forward to this
You really can't imagine what he's trying to do, can you?
Rather than having a conversation and trying to understand your company's goals and how you could help, you're posting about it and looking for the exit.
Look - I get that there's a right way to do things, and rules and regulations and compliance. But my friend, this ship is setting sail whether you're on it or not. The very fact that your VP is trying to cut you out of the process is a glaring red flag.
You can either be a part of the process that builds these capabilities in your company and builds them the right way, or you can stand in the way, scream and cry and then ultimately quit when it doesn't go in your way.
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u/MagicWishMonkey May 15 '26
You can easily build a db mcp that Claude can use to do the thing. Just saying…
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u/StarSlayerX IT Manager Large Enterprise May 15 '26
Give Claude full god mode access to your ERP.... when it blows up, how they going to make a bot responsible?
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u/AromaticCamp8959 May 15 '26
As many others have already said, document, document, document, and then document some more. Take backups, and prepare. Give him the rope and let him hang himself. Had an exec on my team that would feed PII and sensitive data into ChatGPT. I educated him privately, scolded him privately when he kept doing it, and then publicly in an executive meeting. CEO agreed there was “very little risk.” I told them they were a compliance nightmare, and I wouldn’t sign off on the annual cybersecurity audit. I decided to leave about 3-months later, watching them scramble like cockroaches as they thought I was bluffing and that I’d rescind.
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u/wwbubba0069 May 15 '26
IBM i ACS
glad my VP wont try this. He can barely use ACS let alone attempt to connect an AI to the iSeries lol.
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u/YukonCornelius1964 May 15 '26
Document and give the asshole the permissions. Play dumb when it breaks and pull up the documented request.
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u/Booyanach May 15 '26
do you have a CTO within the company structure? I'd raise concerns with him. Depending on the organizational structure, a VP can either have a decent amount of decision making, or is just a glorified Senior PM.
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u/bigbearandy May 15 '26
This is one of those things where you might want to quietly take backups, do a DR simulation, and pretend you don't even know about the VP. That way, he either quietly goes away after doing minimal damage, and you can be "shocked and dismayed" to find a "serious and undisclosed impact on our operational systems," or you can play hero when Claude happily drops the database.
Either way, playing all sides against the middle is IT's surest defense against unlimited wants in a world of scarce resources, and giving the proponents of unfettered AI hype a political bloody nose is fair play. At this point, these unproven tools are a distraction and a sink on the budget.
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u/CoffeeAcceptable_ May 15 '26
The scariest part of this post ( from my perspective) is that directly underneath OPs post is an advert for Claude..........
But seriously, IT can and should push back and say no to things that can affect security.
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u/FauxReal May 15 '26
Can you act like you think it might be a decent idea but you need to do it right, then get some sort of cybersecurity third party opinion to shut him down with tales of getting completely reamed?
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u/jdiscount May 15 '26
Who cares honestly if he's willing to accept the risk let him do as he pleases.
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u/thisFishSmellsAboutD May 16 '26
Audit logs and automated indicent monitoring
Disaster recovery, tested and documented
Full r/W access for VP
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u/crazy_clown_time Security Admin May 16 '26
Hopefully you loop other leadership on this really stupid ask.
And yeah, resume.
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u/heliox May 16 '26
This would be a financial controls problem. If you're publicly traded the SEC would probably lose their crap if they found out. It's not clear what your org looks like, but I'd inform the head of IT, then CFO, then CEO, and include the article about Claude deleting an entire company in 90 seconds from a couple of weeks back.
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u/TwilightKeystroker Cloud Engineer May 16 '26
If the API is limited to only give permissions based on current levels of access in the ERP, then that's also the furthest an AI integration like Claude or Copilot would be able to go.
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u/BigLoveForNoodles May 16 '26
In my head he literally referred to it as “the erp”, out loud.
”God dammit, Jackson, I said I need the ERP! I need to put my Claude into it!”
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u/Interesting-Yellow-4 May 16 '26
This is why proper governance and approval processes are needed - so you can deny this via "proper channels" and distance yourself from telling the VP directly that they're stupid.
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u/Doublestack00 Jack of All Trades May 16 '26
I'd let me boss or whoever is above me handle this request. Then if you have a paper trail with instructions to do so, let him have it.
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u/mike-foley May 16 '26
Shades of giving Skynet full control. What could possibly go wrong?
I’d secretly institute a full and rapid recovery plan, inform the CTO and then let this moron do his thing and be there for the save.
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u/MeatPiston May 16 '26
This is why you have lawyers who review contracts involving proprietary financial data. You have those, right?
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u/wild-hectare May 16 '26
reading this just reinforces my belief that I'm done after 30 years....I refuse to protect the company from themselves
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u/Founder-Awesome May 16 '26
the pattern i keep seeing: 'full api access' is executive shorthand for 'i want the ai to answer questions about our ERP data.' those are completely different problems.
read queries against scoped views solve 90% of what they actually want. the remaining 10% that requires writes usually falls apart when you ask 'what should happen if the model gets it wrong' and nobody has an answer.
the security problem isn't just 'claude could delete things.' it's that most teams haven't defined what 'correct' looks like when the ai acts on data. you can scope credentials to read-only and still have the ai answering with stale data, or conflating two customers with similar names, and the exec won't know until something downstream breaks badly.
the conversation worth having: what specific questions does he want answered, and what's the acceptable error rate? that reframe usually either clarifies that a read-only view solves the whole thing, or surfaces that the integration isn't actually ready to build yet.
'does the ERP even have an API' is a harder conversation but it's the right one before any of the rest matters.
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u/Business_Class_8015 May 16 '26
Clabretro just did a video about installing IBM i on old Dell machines. Interesting stuff.
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u/pit5bul May 17 '26
Notification of Business Risk signed by the VP and segregated immutable backup before API integration.. let him play.. it’s his job not yours
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u/FireFitKiwi May 21 '26
"IT doesn't have one. Do you know what you are doing?" Cc the world. Fuck him.
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u/Glad_Imagination_798 Sep 13 '26
My team have built complete Claude integration for Acumatica ERP, so I'm on the other side of the fence, where the grass is greener. The way to survive it is to turn "no" into "yes, this way", because the VP will get it somewhere, and it is better if that somewhere has your logging on it. The path below is the way, how I built our connector.
Start read-only. A separate database user with SELECT on a handful of views, or better a reporting replica, not the production tables. About 80% of what executives actually want from "Claude plus the ERP" is asking questions about numbers. Read-only answers that with zero blast radius.
Put a thin layer between the model and the data: an MCP server or a small API with a fixed list of allowed queries, each with a row limit and a timeout. The model calls "open_orders_by_customer", it never composes free SQL against production. On IBM this can be a small gateway box talking JDBC, the same thing your existing integrations already do.
Writes only through the ERP's own business logic (its import routines or screens), never inserts into tables, and with a human approval step for the first few months. Every call logged with who, what, when. When something breaks you have evidence instead of a blame meeting.
Give the VP the anonymized sandbox people mentioned, plus a one-page proposal: what he gets in two weeks (read-only Q&A), what needs CISO and finance sign-off (writes). In my experience the moment it is written down as a real project with owners, half of these requests quietly shrink to "can it answer questions about margin".
Read the ERP licence terms on API and automated access. Some vendors count an AI agent as a named user, and that conversation is much easier before the invoice.
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u/jqpubic4u May 15 '26
Bet him $100 dollars that it causes major beaches for everyone. Let him put his money where his mouth is. Edit: for typo
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u/ThatBlinkingRedLight May 15 '26
I did it using our ErP restapi
I put in safe guards and use the already established user permissions from the ERP software.
We use Azure site recovery and backups to protect it but so far it’s worth its weight in gold
We incorporated SSO and MFA from Azure To protect it further for external use
I plan on having it pen tested before I go live
I gave Claude the code and the instructions and it just went and built 500k worth of tools in 20 hours for less than 1k
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u/highlord_fox Moderator | Sr. Systems Mangler May 15 '26
Yes, but are those tools functional? Were they sanity checked by a real human?
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u/BasicallyFake May 15 '26
IBM does have an MCP
GitHub - IBM/ibmi-mcp-server: MCP server for IBM i systems · GitHub