Managing Personal Electronics and Software In the Workplace 387
darien writes "Last night Symantec hosted a round-table discussion on the topic of consumer devices in the workplace. John Brigden, Symantec's senior VP for EMEA, pointed out that regardless of the policies businesses may lay down, individuals will always try to use their favorite gadgets and websites at work. Reminds me of when I worked in IT support: no matter how many times we told users they weren't allowed to install ICQ, or to connect their personal laptops to the corporate network, they insisted on doing it. Frequently they even asked us to help them do it."
Technologies are a part of life now... (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to shore these up with human controls: enforced policies, employee agreements, and the like.
This is a human problem caused by our adaptation to technology in our entire lives. Should the computer have been a device you only run into at work, the draconian idea of 'you may only do what we say' may have stuck. But since people get to experience life outside this kind of control, they're going to crave it everywhere.
And resisting it is mostly just frustrating everyone.
Now, I'm not saying you have to support every oddball app on the planet. I would recommend you have an 'approved software' list, and back that software up with support. Saying 'that is not supported, use this' is far better than locking things down, from my experience.
Focus on the wetware, not the software and hardware...
Good luck with that. (Score:4, Funny)
Good luck with that.
Since you seem to believe that setting one limit is unenforceable, why do you believe that setting a different limit is enforceable?
You cannot use IM app X because:
a. You are not allowed to use IM at work.
b. You are only allowed to use IM app Y (which does not connect to the service you want to use).
And, from TFA:
Why do so many people see "No" as "reactive"? You can evaluate new technology and new products and determine that they present security issues that outweigh their benefits.
In just about every other aspect of business this would be a non-issue. You don't allow people to replace the phone system with their own phone that is incompatible with your PBX but it's okay because they can just call the phone company and run a POTS line to their cubicle.
While they wait for that, they'll fire up a deep fryer in their cubicle and make up a batch of donuts for everyone.
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Heck, you are actually limited on bringing in any non-official laptops...but, then again, these places were pretty secured facilities.
Anyway....a policy of use it and LOSE it...pretty effective against any unauthorized electronics in the work place...
Works for me. (Score:2)
Because once you allow people to connect personal items to the network your security model is non-existent. And connecting them to the workstations counts as having them on the network in this instance.
If they want to play music or whatever, they can bring radios / players / etc in. But they cannot use the company's workstations to load iTunes and fill up their iPod. That just creates another potential issue that IT has to deal with.
Now, if they'd be willing to take a pay cut so IT could afford a few more e
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Now, if they'd be willing to take a pay cut so IT could afford a few more employees who would handle iTunes problems and such ... say ... $100 a month ... each.
Nah. I'd rather just be given the appropriate access to fix that stuff myself and get rid of IT altogether.
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is one of those things where you need to identify the work environment you are in. I have worked in banking. It the operation division, what you said would be absolutely true. No second chances. If you went over to corporate, you'd find a more lax attitude. Whether you like it or agree with it, that is the way it was.
If you go to a smaller company, you will probably see an even laxer attitude. The policies vary greatly depending on the organization.
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Indeed, as well as every 3 months somebody publishes a study to say that "evil lusers" are doing bad things sometimes to be more productive and sometimes to slack off. Unfortunately, like many things in life it is a sliding scale rather than a one size fits all solution. Sure block the pr0n, day-trading, ebay side business managing clowns, but for $deity's sake don't set the default home page to the bloated ass corp intranet portal. If I fire up a browser window to read some html documentation or to check a
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i have a simple solution for stopping employees from using unauthorized gadgets at work:
you might also want to make sure that your company health plan doesn't cover work-related sterility.
Re:Technologies are a part of life now... (Score:5, Funny)
I assume the 20 minutes you spent writing this post was on your break and not listed on your timesheet as "continuing technical education".
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Face the facts. You're at work. Unless you're on break, you're expected to leave your personal life at the door.
Actually, the courts, at least in the US, disagree with you. They've stated that yes, you can use very small amounts of times to take care of personal errends, even if not on break. They've spelled out reasonable phone use, so I imagine email / web use would also be reasonably included.
People forced into small, strict break times are routinely found to be less productive that those allowed some
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Or, you take all this energy you're putting into controlling your workforce and spend it on actually earning income for your company.
Whichever works best, I suppose.
IT is entirely cost. Since you'll never, ever, ever really win this fight, pass it to HR and move on.
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If you don;t like it, take a pay cut and go work for the other guy...
Funny thing is, you run a shop like that, and when you need that developer to work 80 hours a week for the next 3 weeks to get a project done on time, and he says "Hell no! I get paid for 40, and you make absolutely sure you get that 40 out of me. Why should I give you anything extra?"
So, you fire them, and your project tanks.
Then they get a job elsewhere, where they are free to do whatever, but have deadlines. They meet every deadline at their new job and still have the freedom to enjoy their life. Th
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If you're working in an environment where complete security is essential and staff can't be trusted, and there is no possibility of fixing the latter problem, then perhaps that sort of measure is justified. Anyone working in such an environment probably accepts that as part of the nature of their job anyway.
On the other hand, it is currently 20:15 where I am, and I am goofing off reading Slashdot for a few minutes while waiting to make sure a build and test run gets going OK overnight. Would I still be here
ISeekYou (Score:4, Funny)
No matter how many times we told users they weren't allowed to install ICQ
Ahhh, 1998 was a great year, wasn't it?
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I still have an ICQ account. Thanks to Pidgin, I'm even logged in on it. And I don't think anyone has *ever* tried to contact me with it.
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I get that from Yahoo. Usually it goes:
[random sequence of letters] [my username]?
It's convenient that they do it that way, because it makes it really easy to identify...
Simple solution, stop trying to ban devices (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies need to start looking at WHY their employee's want to connect personal devices to coporate systems. If its just so that they can import calenders, contact lists, etc into their PDA or calender at home then set up systems to allow it. If its to take confidential materials out of the office to work on at home (since how many people actually work a 40 hour week anymore), then set up proper encryption protocals to allow this but at the same time minimize the risks associated with data being lost.
Remember the best way to get somebody to do something is to tell them they are not allowed to.
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I agree completely. Blanket bans on all devices or software beyond the bare minimum ITS wants to support is going to do nothing but create circumventions. A lot of that circumvention will be done as surreptitiously as possible, probably improving the chances of problems down the road.
A better approach is probably to allow employees to request exceptions, with explanation. For example, my personal laptop is currently plugged into my office. I do a lot of work on it and it travels with me when I go to mee
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Enforcing the policy is 100% the solution, providing said policy is adequate (another discussion entirely).
You're right, it does depend on the policy. But whether the policy is right depends on whether the users will follow it. If there's a policy in place that hampers functionality to such an extent that users are circumventing it constantly, you start losing a lot of time (= money) in enforcement. At some point, everyone would spend less time and effort if the policy made more sense.
And to be fair, none of us (except maybe our boss) expects our IT manger to support our laptops, we generally take care of the
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No Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube at my workplace. I don't think iTunes works either, but I haven't tried.
Since our business has no use for those sites, they are simply blocked. Along with a host of others, including known malware sites of course.
My field support days often included long and tedious recoveries from users 'needing' Limewire so they could sync their music at work. No, they don't read the warnings, so when they got pwned they feigned ignorance.
And at my current employer, since they provide t
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Arguments that you 'want' to sync to your home system result in admonitions that corporate data is not to be on your home systems, in fact on nothing but provided corporate systems.
Great. That means no webmail, no VPN unless you give me a company laptop, etc. Which means as soon as I'm out the door, work will wait until I get back. If the customers (either internal or external) don't like that, I can just tell them "sorry, company policy".
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Hey, if you're expected to give more support than 9-5, office-time, then you company needs to give you the tools, eh?
My corporate notebook does offer VPN access, which is very functional, and with that I can do everything offsite but walk over 2 rows and chitchat about the Packers. And we have managed IM for that. I'm expected to proxy through the corporate firewall for Internet sites, cause if I don't, and there is a compromise, I was warned specifically about this and I will be sitting in a courtroom.
Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
We block certain website groups (adult, gambling, games, etc) by default and everyone must go through our proxy to the outside world. Web logs are checked throughout the day and those who try 30 different ways to get to boobsgonewild.com are reported.
Most people have only User permissions so they can't install something and we regularly do sweeps of unapproved software on those people who do have admin privileges. I'm the one who generally gets the call to remove the software. We also check for firewalls on PCs and other software which can potentially bypass our firewall or hide the user.
As far as electronics are concerned, the worst we have are people using fans or heaters, depending on the season.
Not sure what the big deal is. These are just basic network security measures which any decent admin should do and have set up.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why some IT departments bother to block web sites. It is a double-edged sword, and both edges cut against the company.
On one hand, if employees are visiting porn sites on company time, they should be fired. Setup a proxy, trap it, and get them out of there. Don't block them, and keep an unhappy unproductive employee around.
Second, if small things like checking the sports scores, or stocks, or news is what keeps them happy at work, then don't waste resources trying to stop them. Their boss has measures to determine if an employee is wasting time - let those measures work. If you want to keep logs of how often they do it, then fine. But don't try to block them because ultimately you can't. You can't stop them from talking about it at the water cooler or checking the scores on their cell phones, or bringing in magazines and newspapers. It isn't the IT departments job to police social behavior in the office. That's their boss's job. Often times these types of activities lead to comradery like the after-work fantasy football league. It bonds the employees and makes them more stable.
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Informative)
Absolutely agree. However, working for the government, the union will not let you just fire someone. You have to document everything from now til Tuesday, give them a warning, note it in their file, THEN bring action at which point the union makes all kinds of excuses for why the person shouldn't be fired.
I know for a fact that there was someone who, every day, was trying to get to dozens of different adult sites for 20 minutes at a time. Supposedly it was all documented and set on to the higher ups but the guy still has a job. Whether it wasn't pursued or the union found an excuse to keep the guy, I don't know. If it were up to me, anyone trying for more than five minutes should get auto-fired. No appeal.
It's one thing to accidentally type in a wrong address or click a link without looking (I did that recently) but the logs will clearly show you left the link quickly once you realized your mistake. It's another to see the same person day after day trying to get to slutsrus.com.
We don't block those kind of sites. SI, MarketWatch, CNN are all perfectly accessible. Even overseas web sites are accessible. I look at two Japanese sites and the BBC and there is someone here who checks a Chinese-language site daily. The only ones we do block are what are considered time wasters (games, chat rooms, etc).
Some places are more strict, others more permissive. It all depends on the agency. I think the policy in place here strikes a good balance between letting people check news and such while limiting time wasters.
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I have no problem giving users access to something like iGoogle, or my.yahoo. We log how much time they're connected to non-intranet sites, and if this gets excessive, we notify HR. However, it is CRITICAL that we block access to any unapproved URL. Not doing so is a huge security risk for more reasons than i can count.
If the site is safe, it takes about 10 minutes for a helpdesk ticket to be filed, approved, and that site added to a white list. It's easy to log how much time they spend on these sites,
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I guess I'm lucky to work for a more enlightened company. Our policy is simple: we're all adults with a job to do, and as long as you do it efficiently without causing problems, nothing else really matters. Honestly, I'd hate working for your employer and probably wouldn't last a month.
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Same where I work. We're all grown-ups. Do your job, meet your deadlines - the rest are details. Engineers are black boxes. Requests for work go in, results come out. Who cares what's in the box?
I'm currently surfing Slashdot and watching ST:TNG from my USB drive while my compiler is doing its thing. Sometimes I'll open up a non-network connected VMware player image from my USB drive and work in a programming environment on personal projects.
As long as I get my assigned work done why should they c
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The only way to stop someone from bringing in porn to watch is to completely disable the ability for every work device to accept data from any non-work device.
This means no USB drives, no CD or DVD drives, no PDAs/cell phones that have web browsers (or any network connectivity).
I think if I worked in a place that restrictive that I would bring in printouts of hex dumps of porn movies and pictures and enter them by hand (BYTE magazine, anyone?) just so that management would have to ban keyboards, too.
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The best part was... they left all MS games and there was this 1 person who played Solitai
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We block certain website groups (adult, gambling, games, etc) by default and everyone must go through our proxy to the outside world. Web logs are checked throughout the day and those who try 30 different ways to get to boobsgonewild.com are reported.
As other people have pointed out, you really shouldn't do this unless you're a K-12 school (or a library or similar), and that's just for liability reasons. You might block something important, users can get around this, it's a waste of money and time for the filtering software, and your employees WILL find other ways to waste their time. The can surf the web on their iPhones, for example.
Most people have only User permissions so they can't install something and we regularly do sweeps of unapproved software on those people who do have admin privileges.
If you think this prevents people from using "unapproved software" you're incredibly naive. Unless you have a whitelist
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Where I work we're starting to strip away admin rights as well. The problem of software requiring administrative rights is nowhere near as bad as it used to be. Our biggest hurdle is mobile users that need to install printers wherever they might be working. It's not possible for everyone to take away admin rights, but for those that can, it's a good idea.
We're also using Sophos antivirus, which has software access control built in. We can tell it not to let users install Skype, etc. They'll have device cont
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Um, never heard of a "run as" macro? You don't have to be logged in as an admin to run software that requires admin rights.... Not on Mac, Linux, XP or Vista, and if you're using something else, you've got other bigger issues to worry about!
Besides, any software that DOES require admin rights to execute was poorly coded, and should be replaced as soon as posisble. Keep in mind any user logged in with admin rights not only has access to their own machines, but an infection could easily spread network wide
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MAC tag all of the corporate machines (should be easy if you're asset tagging systems already). Set up all corporate machines in VLANS assigned by MAC addresses. Set up user groups in your filtering system based on job title, machine type, etc and strictly limit inside access to the web via white lists and proxys.
Now, create a seperate VLAN, and automatically put all system in that VLAN that are not on your tagged, approved, MAC address listing. Let those machines access the net through a secondary metho
Hmm (Score:3, Funny)
Looking around my desk I see the following electronic widgets that are mine rather than the companies:
A pair of DEC Shark computers.
A Sparc based luggable.
Coffee percolator.
Blender.
As long as I got them checked out for electrical safety the system support people here were fine with it, and this is nothing as compared to some of the stuff I saw at a big dot.com that likes exclamation marks. One guy had a pinball machine in his cube, and another had a large tropical fish bubbling away while percolators were everywhere.
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DEC, Sparc? (Score:3, Funny)
Blender? (Score:2)
You have a blender at work? Wow, and I thought people who talk on the phone all day were annoying!
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Yeah, but it's not in your cube, it's in the tiki bar.
Your office has a tiki bar, right? Right?
Some possible solutions. (Score:2)
To solve the issue of personal laptops being connected to the corporate network, there needs to be some kind of server software where every approved device's MAC address is registered. When a non-approved device is connected, it will not be assigned an IP address by the DHCP server. This will cut 90% of the devices from ever being connected, since most lusers have no idea about MAC addresses, IP addresses, DHCP, and the fact that they can manually assign an IP address if they know the proper range. This doe
Re:Some possible solutions. (Score:5, Insightful)
...since most lusers have no idea about...
you set up all computers used by lusers to boot
What kind of attitude is this? You come-off as a condescending PHB. All the other stuff is good but damn. That just put a bad taste in my mouth.
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We have something like this too called DeepFreeze.
It prevents permanent changes to the OS and no virtual Machines. We use it in the public library.
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We have something like this too called DeepFreeze. It prevents permanent changes to the OS and no virtual Machines. We use it in the public library.
Deep Freeze doesn't work for anything but a public console.
It doesn't let you save anything to the drive. Your office drones need their word documents.
It's called 802.1X. (Score:2)
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For anything that doesn't support 802.1X natively (printers, net cams, etc), you can white list the MAC on a port.
Look at me! I'm a printer! Hack hack hack.
At work, supposed to be working... (Score:2, Insightful)
I know when I am at work, I am supposed to be working. Nevertheless, there really doesn't need to be an all or nothing policy as it improves employee morale to allow some personal flexibility in the workplace. I know my company tries very hard to lock things down, and yet does allow some off-topic internet browsing (Slashdot, right now for example) and the occasional personal telephone call. They are, however, quick to remind us that the electronic networks to which we connect are a) company property and b)
Lock down ports and whitelist allowed MAC IDs (Score:2)
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Associating MAC addresses with specific switches and addresses on the DHCP server is precisely how my place does things. It means that even if someone does sneak in their laptop, plugging it into a network socket is going to result in no connection. Compare that to when I was on site as a consultant at a very large investment bank last year - they had personal wireless access points and laptops all over company network. Some of the company access points were unsecured while the personal ones were brought in
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My girlfriend got a job as a sysadmin at a new media agency by pulling out her Tungsten C and cracking their wireless networks right there. "You need these secured." One of her first jobs was to run Ethernet everywhere and keep one very locked-down wifi in the conference room.
(They got wifi everywhere cos it was l33t and k3wl and stuff. And it was several networks all on channel 6, as were the ones for other businesses on the floors above and below that were interfering. FAIL.)
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Why do things the hard way? Active Directory + Radius + 802.1x would simplify things quite a bit for you. It's also much more secure.
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Compare that to when I was on site as a consultant at a very large investment bank last year - they had personal wireless access points and laptops all over company network.
With lax internal controls like that, is it any wonder that so many banks have collapsed?
People are still talking about this? (Score:2)
Ten years ago it was a topic, has anything changed recently that makes this a less exhausted subject? Whoever thought up this "round table" idea doesn't have enough to do I guess.
Failure to lock down machine = users WILL install. (Score:2)
"Reminds me of when I worked in IT support: no matter how many times we told users they weren't allowed to install ICQ, or to connect their personal laptops to the corporate network, they insisted on doing it. Frequently they even asked us to help them do it."
1. Users WILL attempt to install stuff
2. If they can't, they will eventually give up
However, if they manage, then they will push for more and more stuff, and demand support for stuff they never should of installed in the first place.
Surely they should
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I'm afraid you have it wrong. They WILL attempt to install stuff and one of these will happen
a) They will succeed
b) They will fail but break something serious in the process (by booting from a special CD from a friend or something like that)
c) They will fail but find some decent-work around
d) They will tell you to fuck off and find a better place to work
e) If they are incompetent enough to do a, c or d they will g
Solution (Score:2)
3G Modem (O2): EUR19.00 + EUR20.00 per month
Problem solved.
Oh jeeze (Score:2)
It's like Prohibition - Unenforcable (Score:5, Insightful)
The same kind of thing applies in a corporation. You don't want to lower morale, and you especially don't want employees to lose respect for your policies. That certainly poses more risk to the success of an organization than connecting your iPhone to the wifi network.
Maybe a better solution would be investing in IT infrastructure.
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The same kind of thing applies in a corporation. You don't want to lower morale, and you especially don't want employees to lose respect for your policies. That certainly poses more risk to the success of an organization than connecting your iPhone to the wifi network.
Maybe a better solution would be investing in IT infrastructure.
It's a bit awkward in IT. Hey, it's always a bit awkward.
You let everyone install anything they like and do whatever they want -> Congratulations, you've just been picked for BSA Raid of the Month! (In some countries, directors are criminally liable so you have to take it seriously) With extra interest from the PRS if MP3 files are found!
You let nobody install anything -> well, the implications depend entirely on the role of the end user. If the PC is being used by someone in a call centre, this i
Mostly the fault of IT (Score:4, Interesting)
When IT doesn't serve the users, the users have to be their own IT. Users are bad at it and it causes problems.
The answer is to stop saying NO when users ask for reasonable (non-harmful) things. Help the users instead of trying to make your own job easier.
Let me guess... (Score:2)
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Symantic would be happy to sell you some sort of "proactive compliance solution" to address this deep and serious problem that they were nice enough to convene a roundtable about.
Yep. Symantec Endpoint Compliance.
They've basically taken the antivirus product as far as it's possible to go so now when you buy the corporate version you get centrally managed antivirus, firewall, intrusion prevention and a certain degree of management over what devices may be plugged in and what software (if anything) may be executed.
Most of this can already be done with Group Policies in Active Directory so unless you haven't got AD or anything analogous to it, I can't really see what the benefit is.
Mac or Linux (Score:2)
Nice thing of us having an all Mac office (even better would be Linux) is that users generally don't have compatible software, so employee installation are at a minimum.
On a few of our networks we have a wifi outside of the internal network which could be connected, though we provide enough computers so they should not require that.
I think part of the thing admins should look into is why are they wanting to connect their stuff or install software. If there is a valid unfilled need, then that should be addr
It's amazing what people will do at work... (Score:2)
At work right now so I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrit, but anyways...
You'd be surprised the crap people try to get away with at work. I work at a college and we have several computers on mobile carts with projectors for class lectures. I do the immediate repair and updates to the systems and I've found registry scrubbers, online gambling software, chat programs, itunes downloads, and all sorts of shady things that shouldn't be on the systems. They aren't even the professor's office systems. These are only us
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These are only used during class. What could they possibly be doing while students are there in front of them?
I believe the cleaning crew are the culprits, not your profs. They get physical access everywhere, so they feel every computer is theirs to use at 3AM.
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We got this nifty new technology due to a grant from the department of homeland security. They call them "locks."
Solution: Give them a VM (Score:5, Interesting)
Just give them VMPlayer and a XP/SP3 image that is only like 5 gigs and they can install whatever they want.
Then lock down the the company machine.
If something goes wrong with the VM, just give them a new one. Sorry, but there is no support other than that. If they lose stuff in the VM, then that's not your problem.
It's time to get tough (Score:5, Interesting)
We're already there in the UK Financial Services industry. Earlier this year, the FSA (our financial regulator) issued a report on best practice [fsa.gov.uk] that, amongst other things, recommends that
If you're in the industry and doing less, expect regulatory sanctions if anything goes wrong. It's time to get tough on slack security.
Unsupported Apps (Score:2)
As a state insitution, we had employees go out and buy various smart-devices all of which ran proprietary "push" clients; some of wich worked well, others not, others securely, others non-securely. The issue was we had literally hundreds of
"no corporate devices outside of work" (Score:2)
I fail to understand why you would try to do this (Score:2)
I mean, we do not allow people to send email using any outlook client, but thats for obvious and technical reasons. We first tried to enforce this by policy since I sort of expect people to obey policy. We had one guy who insisted on using it no matter how many times I tolled him not to. So we explicitly disallow it at the server. Along with this we disallowed common non-encrypted services like windows shares and the like.
However, whats the hatred of IM services? I mean, this sort of thing is a social probl
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However, whats the hatred of IM services? I mean, this sort of thing is a social problem not a technical one. The only reason you would usually try to keep a lid on it is if you supposed employees were wasting their time, and this is a problem for HR or management, not the IT department. If its simply a matter of installing unauthorized software then you have two choices from a technical point of view, authorize it or disallow users installing software using a technical solution. If your platform does not let you have this kind of control then your using the wrong platform for the kind of control you seek.
Your homework assignment for tonight: setup a yahoo messenger account, setup pidgin on a machine that's on 24/7, walk away for 24 hours.
If you can count the number virus wielding chatterbots that have messaged you on one hand, then please see a doctor about the extra twenty digits you've somehow acquired. Internal IM is nice, but even then it can quickly become a productivity drain.
HUGE problem in client-side computing land... (Score:2)
The answer is, you really have to design your systems in a secure way so that some new kid can plug in his iPhone and not cause havoc. It's a totally new world and I'm even trying to get used to it. Feeling like a fuddy-duddy in your early 30s is scary sometimes.
I work in the client-side computing world, taking care of standards-setting for client systems in a large company. For the most part, gone are the days of an IT department absolutely mandating configurations and software choices. Even if you try, pe
This comes up every few months on /. (Score:2)
There's a discussion like this every few months on /., and it almost always boils down to the same argument:
"I can be trusted to do anything I like on a PC, therefore everyone in the company can be trusted to do anything they like on a PC, therefore locking them down achieves absolutely nothing and it pisses everyone off. Hell, don't even bother putting any software on them - just hand them out as they left the factory and let end-users do that. Much easier than having to wait for someone from IT to come
Embrace, don't extinguish (Score:4, Interesting)
no matter how many times we told users they weren't allowed to install ICQ, or to connect their personal laptops to the corporate network, they insisted on doing it.
We're not assholes about IT like you are apparently. We tell them "sure, bring in your personal laptops". The switches run 802.1x. If your computer hasn't been issued a certificate, you get an internet-only connection which blocks outbound SMTP, and monitors your traffic with SNORT. If it appears you have a virus or are passing bad traffic, you get blocked.
Re:Fire them! (Score:5, Insightful)
If they won't follow policy, you fire them! What's the problem? In this day and age, IT folks are easy to replace.
Think you can't? I beg to differ - I don't care who you are.
I think you need to meet somewhere in the middle. Employees expect some flexibility with their equipment, and yes there should be limitations on what you can or can not use on that equipment, but a blanket statement like "Don't follow the policy-fired" isn't what is really being asked here.
How do you find a good position for where the policy and employee desires meet? I certainly wouldn't work for a company that refused to even consider installing certain programs or the use of certain 'gadgets'.
An example of this is that how certain 'closed' or camera restricted areas are modifying their policies and training so that people can carry their cell phones with them since they nearly all have built in cameras. IE: in areas where you are already allowed to carry a cell phone, you take a special training course and then are allowed to use a cell phone that has a built in camera. There are still restrictions, but it recognizes that it is hard to find a phone w/o a camera.
The result was that you ended up with VPs and such who couldn't pick the cell phone they wanted because the stores didn't carry them without cameras. And if you don't care that a VP wants to pick a certain phone, and the only rationale you can come up with is "It's policy" Then perhaps it is you that should be worried that IT folks are easy to replace.
Re:Fire them! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a nice theory, but unless you work in fast food high turnover is not a good thing. It's very expensive to find and train qualified people, so dumping them for minor things like this is unwise.
Re:Fire them! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a nice theory, but unless you work in fast food high turnover is not a good thing. It's very expensive to find and train qualified people, so dumping them for minor things like this is unwise.
Pretty much.
It is much easier (and cheaper) to restrict things, but give employees the ability to request certain features, programs, or support for gadgets. It does take time to evaluate those requests, but it is certainly cheaper than replacing an unhappy employee or one that needs to get around the blocks because there is no method to request acess. When you make the decision, it is also helpful to explain in a dept or company wide letter why the program or gadget is blocked. Do not install "XYZ" will only get you so far. Do not install "XYZ" because it has a known security flaw that we cannot allow on our system, will give you a much better response.
Re:Fire them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cos yes, the bright minds at my working place have a blanket ban that prevents downloading every damn
And of course they also ban every IM program available, even if using it actually would save time and improve productivity, cos we won't have to send a freaking internal email (slow as hell, btw) to just give the other a job related url, a block of code, or whatever.
Yes, I know I should just tell my boss "hey, can't do it, go and tell IT their policy sucks bigtime". But my boss answer is "download it at home and bring it back in your usb". And since I'm not going to spend my free time downloading things for my job, I just circumvent their stupid policies.
So before blindly defending a strict IT policy, make sure it actually makes sense.
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In general I agree with you - I've seen some strong & stupid policies in my time. But this I have to call-out:
"And of course they also ban every IM program available, even if using it actually would save time and improve productivity..."
They do this because the vast, vast majority of people use it for chatting when they should be working. Even people who do use it productively often *also* use it for chatting.
If I owned a company, I would ban chat in a heartbeat.
-Jeff
Re:Fire them! (Score:4, Insightful)
You're assuming that if you ban IM, people will be more productive. I don't think that's true: they'll just find something else to be unproductive with.
Workers need time off besides lunch and coffee breaks. Either way you'll get the unproductiveness, either through sloppy work at the end of the day or by them having their mini breaks. If that time is spent chatting to their girlfriends, that's fine.
On the other hand, when they are being productive, they can easily save time by sending bits of code or whatever through IM. This increases their productivity.
I don't see the problem, except for if I would find myself working for a person who is this restrictive about my life, I'd quit in a heartbeat.
Re:Fire them! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone would question IT's value - just that when they get all self-indulgent like the obviously trolling grandparent... well, then.
You don't fire a guy for installing software - unless he's being malicious. And then you still don't fire him for installing software - you fire him for being malicious.
We used proxies to do our football pools while at work... after 10 years of doing it they suddenly installed a blocker. Did our manager know? Um, yeah, he was in the pool. Sure, we could have done the pool from home - but shouldn't work want me there? Old lab machines running Windows 95 suddenly stop working because some IT guy decides to put some policy enforcement agent on them that uses up the entire 32MB of RAM... doesn't put in RAM of course. We disable the program, computer fixed. As a result, the helpdesk guys refer people over to me when someone complains about a really slow ancient computer. IT one day caps our outgoing email size - tells us that "email is not suitable for large file transfer". Of course, they don't give us outward-facing FTP or anything else that is "suitable". Nice. So we buy space on a godaddy FTP server and use that until they get their act together.
IT is great - except when they aren't. Not everyone breaking the rules is someone you'd want to fire.
Re:Fire them! (Score:5, Interesting)
There doesn't need to be this rift between IT staff and the people they support, the two groups need to work together. At least, that's what my group does.
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The nice thing about IT people is that there are plenty of good ones, and you can afford to hire them and fire the idiots.
The joys of having linux administered for me by someone else:-)
Re:Fire them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Installing a potential attack vector like ICQ when you were asked not to should be grounds for firing.
No, it shouldn't.
Then again, why does IT let these people even have the ability to install software of any kind?
Exactly. The only reason we have IT is because the average person can't keep up with all of this stuff. If security and networking were easy, there wouldn't be an IT department. If IT wants all potential attack vectors ruled out, then they should do it by locking down the PC. If an otherwise good secretary clicks on an ICQ installer at some point, she sure as hell should NOT be fired.
Let me ask you - if you lose your ID badge, maybe leave it on the bus... should you be fired? After all, someone could use it to enter the building - it's a security risk that is all your fault, regardless of intent.
Re:Fire them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is: you're dealing with real actual people that have real actual lives and interests. Your job is to secure IT infrastructure AND support your users. If you care only about your holy sanctified security, you're only doing one half of your job and if they manage to install software, you don't even perform that half properly.
People use ICQ at home all the time and somehow many of them manage to not get rootkitted and that's not out of sheer luck. So where's the problem in reproducing the same guidelines for your workplace that sane home users follow when using ICQ? There are peer-reviewed GPL'ed ICQ clients, remember?
And why is IT security on desktop machines so important? You control their web access, you control your servers and your data center is behind many layers of firewalling. The worst that could happen is a w32.Blaster outbreak among your workstations and that's going to happen only if you skimp on updates, scanners and internal firewalling.
So what? You have images to reinstall one machine in less than ten minutes. The poor little user who wrecked his machine by installing ICQ will be ashamed for weeks among his coworkers. You can BOFH them into oblivion later on, so why should anyone be fired then?
And then again this is not only about revenue-risk-tradeoffs but also because of company attitudes, company loyalty, trust between departments and an environment worth working in. After all, we all do 10 hour workdays sometimes and God help our office staff if they were confined to Word and Excel only then. We want them to actually like going to work, because that saves a ton of wage raises in the long run and reduces turnover by extreme percentages. If you annoy your users, you cost your company brownie points and raise turnovers. And high turnovers cost more than all ICQ desasters combined.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Honestly, I don't know why IT doesn't just lock down PCs as the default. None of this "make a business case" stuff to install something new - just have a half-competent IT guy okay the install and let the user's supervisor know that it's going on.
And sometimes people who fancy themselves competent make some mistakes (ahem, me, ahem). Like one time I was testing QNX (we used it on an embedded system) and I plugged it into the network with a fixed IP and it crashed a bunch
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, it seems like the useful number here is "how many IT guys could I fire if people followed the rules a little better". Are you sure you want management to have that number? I'd expect them to announce a policy, fire half the IT staff, and consider it a win. People wouldn't actually change their habits, of course, so it would be unpleasant all around.
Look up "Enumerating Badness". (Score:2)
The problem with depending upon anti-virus packages is that they are reactive. And their is a delay in them.
It is a LOT easier (and verifiable) to identify what SHOULD be on a machine and then remove everything else.
Which is why most decent IT shops lock down the machines so that new apps cannot be installed on them.
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In such a scenario, the first thing the PHB would ask of IT is to require the company-endorsed security software to be used, and deny connections from "unsecured" hosts.
Which means if you're a Linux guru, or maybe you just don't want to bog your PC down with the joke that is Symantec Antivirus, then you're blocked off.
Don't be surprised, there are companies that specialize in such idiotic solutions. Remember RSA's SecurID ? What the hell did that accomplish, besides making a small heap of cash for the ven
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A lot of places do this. When I was at Ericsson all employees were in fact licensed for copies of Windows and Office at home on the corporate licence.
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Re: (Score:2)
The big thing that most users don't quite catch is that "protected to the same level as the work PC" means that you can't install unapproved software at home, either. This means no games, no Quicken, no TurboTax, no Elf Bowling, etc. It would also mean that the employee would be the only user allowed to use said home computer (i.e. no spouse, no kids, no parents).
Part of the problem is corporations are pushing all of this work responsibility off on employees and trying to avoid the associated costs. If t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's interesting you should mention that, because it's Internet Explorer that is most widely known for having such serious 0-day exploits.
You know, the browser that you're usually required use instead of that untrustworthy, shifty, new comer, Firefox.
If "it might break someday" is your excuse for saying "no", you might as well shut the whole company down now, crawl into a deep bunker and hide until the day you die.
Unreasonable cowardice is not a virtue.
Re: (Score:2)