Why IT Needs To Change for Gen Z 443
An anonymous reader writes "Staff will routinely be bringing their own devices to work in five years time, according to IT industry experts in the UK. Some companies might already allow a few iPhones and iPads, but CIOs and businesses are not only going to have to support a general influx of consumer kits — they're going to need to get a whole lot more relaxed in general. 'Big businesses are going to have to become more flexible about how IT is provisioned and managed — to enable a new generation of workers who use consumer technologies to communicate and be productive.'"
Not where I work... (Score:4, Insightful)
Staff will routinely be bringing their own devices to work in five years time, according to IT industry experts in the UK
Not where I work. Seriously, a *LOT* would have to change - like a move away from Windows networks, and that's not going to happen (sorry).
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Yeah, I run a home office and I would rather provide a pc than have some virus infected vector on my network.
-AI
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Yeah, I run a home office and I would rather provide a pc than have some virus infected vector on my network.
-AI
... Your problem isn't virus vectors, it's hiring incompetent people.
Re:Not where I work... (Score:4, Informative)
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A person can be a perfectly competent bookkeeper, accountant or any number of other things and yet not be competent (or diligent) enough to keep their machine virus-free.
Technically true. A person can also be extremely intelligent but refuse to shower and constantly cut themselves. There is a minimum level of competence that should be required for a position. Sure, you can do task A - but can you show up to work with clothes on? And (arguably more importantly), can you stop looking at porn while at work? Oh, and while you're at it, don't install strange programs.
I'm not saying you need to be a genius. I'm just saying that there is a certain level of competence that societ
Re:Not where I work... (Score:5, Insightful)
A [insert OS here] computer managed by competent IT staff is likely to be far more secure than an an unmanaged [insert same OS here] computer brought in from the outside.
Yes, even Windows.
Re:Not where I work... (Score:5, Insightful)
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exactly which is why the wired network has strict rules but the wifi is open to the internet.
employee's don't have to use work computers to update facebook.
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A [insert OS here] computer managed by competent IT staff is likely to be far more secure than an an unmanaged [insert same OS here] computer brought in from the outside.
Yes, even Windows.
I would normally agree, except that stupid business decisions make security a third or fourth tier concern on managed machines. ie IE6 Often times, competent IT staff are ordered to suck it up and get used to reimaging regularly.
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What's the problem with having some egress filtering to prevent spam escaping from pwned machines, and with having proper NAT infrastructure in place to log everything? If the network is set up properly, each wired guest machine can be on its own vlan. At work, I use Zultys ZIP4x4 phones set up such that each port on their built-in network switch is on its own VNET. Each phone uses 3 vlans that way. Thus every machine is isolated from all others -- runs on its own network segment with the only other host be
Lousy example but the answer is YES. (Score:3)
You give the person a Civic to drive. It's quiet, sedate, cheap, and boring.
You don't want a delivery employee playing Formula 1 while on the job. It makes them, late for deliveries because they get targeted by the cops and pulled over for driving a sports car (see "Ticket for LOOKING fast")
Their antics cause a crash and hurt someone? Lawsuit.
They crash the car on company time, they (and their insurance) expect the company to pay out for repair/replacement. Repairs on a Maserati cost more than BUYING a
Right! Who is responsible for security? (Score:5, Insightful)
It SHOULD come down to a simple business decision.
Is the advantage of adding those devices going to bring in more revenue than the extra effort and lost/compromised data is going to cost?
Re:Right! Who is responsible for security? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, but it's not just the revenues and cost, it's as much about securing the safety of the business's data (and their customers), and demonstrating a duty of care in the handling of that data. In some case there may be a legal requirement effectively preventing ANY use of the corporate network by the invididual.
Computers provided by the employer should be seen as tools for the job, owned and operated by the employer solely for the benefit of the employer's business.
If that laptop computer is owned by the business, the business can:
Many of the above actions are difficult or impossible if the employee uses their own laptop... unless the laptop is simply a thin client, but even then a key logger would be a security risk.
There is already a big problem with people storing confidential information on laptop computers which leave the workplace. How this can be controlled if staff use their own?
I agree. (Score:2)
Except that violations of that kind are usually dealt with via fines or losing your compliance certification (which requires that you go through the process again after a certain time).
Which can both be translated into MONEY.
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I'd like to first see a correlation between those employees who bring their own devices and those employees who are productive.
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Correct
but what you miss is: Is the advantage of alienating your workers worth your productivity?
If you're happy with only doofuses working for you then go ahead.
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No I do think people are missing a point. I think what will happen is that people will be allowed and encouraged to bring their own devices. BUT those devices will be treated as security risks. Then to get into the network it will be a sort of private cloud type situation.
Think of it as follows; you bring your iphone and you access your corporate network using a terminal. That terminal does not let you share with the local environment. It is completely closed off from your own data. I have already seen some
Security is going to get tighter, no laxer (Score:4, Insightful)
My observation has been in the last 5 years security has become tighter and that there has been increased security. I use to be able to plug in my own laptop most places I worked. No longer. I use to be able to use social network sites and external email. Not for a few years now. Everything is getting locked down from SVN repositories to databases. Development environments including. Even developers are losing admin access on their own machines. If anything this trend is accelerating. I don't know what the person writing the article is smoking.
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It is NOT a bullshit myth. I see it all the time. Developers who don't know what they are doing, don't know why something works, just know hey, if I have admin access it all works. Nevermind the fact that it "works" because his program that is writing crap all over other processes memory space is no longer "access denied", or the developer needed to request a specific privilege instead of asking for complete access. Or the dev has absolutely no idea how ACL's, the UAC, or any other security measure in t
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That will only help you so much. By helping, I mean not really that much at all.
The systems that I have set up I purposely create a whole other wifi network that people can connect their smart phones and personal equipment into. What I tell my clients, and their employees, is that every major website and activity they do on the web represents at minimum a medium risk to the business. Which is why they connect their personal equipment to this separate network that has no possibility of interacting or inte
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I believe the solution is to put the "courtesy" network completely outside of the work network--no connection. Although you still need to run a firewall to prevent rogue servers and downloads. One could argue that the company is completely responsible for any illegal use (downloads, spam) on their corporate IP addresses.
Unless the IP addresses are in a completely seperate range, the company needs to be careful that any spam from the "friends" network doesn't impact the corporate rating.
The next question i
Re:Not where I work... (Score:4, Interesting)
How does your company attract and retain talent with such draconian policies?
Re:Not where I work... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Depends (Score:2)
I'm all for flexibility, but allowing unmanageable, unsecurable, unmonitorable devices like the iPhone (Android isn't much better, Phone 7 is better but still a big step back from WM6), that IT departments will somehow have to support every time they go wrong because they're "being used for work" is simply unworkable.
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True dat.
Keep your fucking cellphone in your pocket, or better yet, leave it at home.
Nothing worse than having an assistant or coworker who spends every free second texting everybody and their brother.
How the fuck are they supposed to stay focused at work?
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Nothing worse than having an assistant or coworker who spends every free second texting everybody and their brother.
How the fuck are they supposed to stay focused at work?
That sounds like a management issue. If your use of $whatever interferes with your ability to work, or with the ability of those around you to work -your boss should simply tell you to cut it out and fire you if you persist.
Re:Depends (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed, it became a issue at my workplace with the guys on the warehouse floor, they are moving large heavy objects while operating forklifts while constantly texting. You cant get their attention cause its also jacked into their ears for MP3, and if you ask them a question they cant tell you what they did 5 seconds ago cause they are totally unfocused on their 1 simple task.
Starting Monday if we see a celphone on the floor your gone, period.
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Not only that, but C-Level executives are also the biggest security problem in a company. I am neither exaggerating nor is it the usual management-bashing.
Usually they will insist for no good (read: work related) reason on being exempt to content filtering and require local administration rights on their computers. Why? Beats me. Maybe an ego thing, how could that support tech grunt have more "power" over my machine than me? Personally, I had to be browbeat into accepting administrative rights on my machine
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So true. My favorite exemption often demanded is the (already idiotic and not helpful to general security) policy of periodically changing passwords. We peons are expected to come up with a secure, non-duplicated and non-derivative password every 3-6 months that we can somehow remember, while the executives don't want to change theirs since it was already a stretch to remember their wife's birthday for their current password.
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You get 3 months between password changes? 'til I started in our company we had a MONTH between changes, with the usual "let your cat jump on the keyboard" PW requirements. Net result? People tacked post-its to their screens. Or into their drawers, when auditors complained about it.
This is not adding to security, it's reducing security. A friend of mine had a pretty neat idea how to keep PWs secure and at the same time get people to use secure PWs, without even having a PW policy. Ok, he has one policy: You
Not on my watch (Score:4, Insightful)
Bringing in non-managed hardware would be a security and support nightmare.
its one thing allowing a personal phone to hit your email server, ( since connecting to them often means you get some control, such as remote wipe and its no worse than offering webaccess to mail ) but its a far different issue letting people bring in their personal computers and expect to have them on the network.
No thanks.
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So you let them bring them and connect to a partitioned network which you treat as a public network, and hit your email server just like they would over the internet. If they need more, make more requirements for VPN access.
Perhaps you underestimate the number of companies that have already forgone many in-house systems in favor of publicly available services. Whether accessed from inside or outside the company network, they are public facing and are secured accordingly.
The point is, if you have not alrea
Re:Not on my watch (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty much what I was thinking.
Ask your CSO/CISO what he thinks of that idea and tell me how long it took him to regain composure. Any security conscious company will monitor what machines are connected to their network and refuse "unknown" machines entry, they might get assigned a different network segment or nothing at all, but certainly these machines that are not under my (read: company's) control will NOT gain any access to anything. Even assuming that the owner isn't trying to "steal" anything, who tells me that nothing on the machine is, unbeknownst to the owner?
You really expect a company to trust its employees to keep their computers clean? Companies that don't even trust their workers to actually, well, WORK when they're at work but feel the need to monitor their presence, behaviour and time on the can?
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no thanks, i like keeping my job
Assertive much? (Score:3)
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I am reminded of an incident back in the dot com era. Some sales VP got an email with a virus, my security system wouldn't let him open it. His solution was to bring his personal laptop in, hook it into the company network and open the email. The resulting virus explored the entire network exploiting NT security share flaws and zeroing out (not just erasing, but filling with nulls) every MS Office document and source code file it could find.
Sounds like your problem isn't a tech problem, it's a HR problem. Solution : Have some good IT policies in place ... but mainly, don't hire idiots. No matter how secure your network is, idiots will work around it. Instead of having a super secure network attacked by idiots, have smart staff and decent security.
We already deal with this issue. (Score:2)
You are welcome to bring in your equipment, and use it. I put time, effort and expense into protecting the company assets from harm, including that which may come from your random equipment on our network, accessing our data. Yes, it takes more (time/effort/expense) to work with your random equipment than it would to just lock you out and threaten you with $punishment when you try to use stuff. That is ok. We have adapted.
Now when your stuff doesn't work, or you cant figure out how to do something with
More info on that? (Score:2)
How are you doing that?
I spend a lot of time locking out systems because I cannot tell the difference between your legitimate connection and your machine being used by som
Why Gen Z Needs To Change for Work (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, no matter what the generation, they should not be allowed to bring more attack vectors and security vulnerabilities in to the workplace.
They are not special snowflakes, and their personal devices are not necessary for productivity.
Businesses where mobile devices are useful and helpful should already have their infrastructures designed to handle it, so again Gen Z will make no difference.
Re:Why Gen Z Needs To Change for Work (Score:5, Interesting)
So your CEO walks in with his new iPhone and wants to access his mobile reporting solution. The one containing all his sales information. You're telling him he can't?
And if the CEO has it, his underlings will have it a few weeks later. They still outrank you. You're going to tell them they can't have it? And when all the managers have it, how long will it be before EVERYONE has access?
Seriously: start preparing, because the tidal wave is coming. It is already happening. 17% of companies now have a "bring-your-own-device" policy in place (a quote from 2 weeks ago by Claudia Imhoff, she spoke at a BI-event I was at). Some provide a choice: company laptop with maintenance or your own device but you do the maintenance. This will grow rapidly.
Philips was migrating to this policy about 5 years ago. Big companies I'm working for are already preparing for that transition. The ones who are not, will find it very hard to satisfy their interal customers. They will also find retainment of new workers a big problem.
Ofcourse this is difficult: it is most difficult for those companies that still have software in place with dedicated clientsoftware, beyond MS Office. Companies (like a few where I worked) that started moving away from that and to webbased apps, are in good position to actually profit from this move.
A couple of things there. (Score:5, Insightful)
There aren't any "internal customers" because the concept of "customer" contains the element of "choice". If you don't like the service, you go to a different vendor. Internal departments do NOT have that option.
The implication being that those "new workers" will be worth the additional considerations. I'm sure you can find enough skilled workers who do not demand that you support their personal electronics.
As can be said with most fads and bubbles. The question isn't whether it will be happening but whether it will be a new requirement. Or will it happen and then fade as the security issues become evident?
Who cares about the software? It's the data that is important?
It's about the data, not the software.
Losing credit card info is a problem.
Getting Excel running on your phone is not an issue.
That depends upon the situation. Do you have read-only access via a secured web site?
What does he REALLY want to accomplish?
He is the CEO. But that just means that he is the CEO.
You can always find a new job.
It's easier to find a new job while you're still working.
Rather than AFTER you're fired because the company hits the papers for losing credit card info because of how you put a hole into your security for the CEO.
And you know that it will be YOU who is fired first and blamed for not keeping the place secure enough.
That's exactly what I'm saying. (Score:3)
Exactly. And when the reporters come calling for quotes about how the crackers got the credit card numbers from us, it will NOT be the CEO who is fired for the security failure.
Not exactly. Someone else who CLAIMS that they can do it will be hired. What do I care? They'll be the one fired when the reporters come calling.
There will ALWAYS be SOMEONE who will claim to be able to do th
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The company will supply the CEO with a properly secured iPhone, just like Obama was supplied with a properly secured Blackberry.
It won't be his personal device. There are too many legal issues associated with having a CEO carrying around a device that doesn't adhere to the variety of requirements of a corporate officer.
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You're going to tell them they can't have it?
No of course you don't dent anything to people more senior than you. But have you ever heard a drill sergeat chewing out a squad of officer recruits? There are ways and means (just put "sir" on the end). You tell them "That's a great idea. I'll get right on it. Oh - and I'll need your cost code for this work ..... you do have a cost code, don't you?" or "Yup, sure. Is that the Mark 3 or the Mark 4, cos those old Mark 2's well - they're just not up to it. ... Oh, that's a shame" and any sysadmin worth his/he
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The CEO makes the decisions :-) Generally everywhere I've seen IT bends over backwards to help out the executives (including home computer repair service for retired execs in some cases). When you're an overhead organization your very survival depends on keeping the bosses happy.
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You are correct that this type of request is common from executive, and that IT bends over backwards to attempt to accommodate it. As the Security Officer of my company, I have a Risk Acceptance form that needs to be signed for this type of situation. It requires a signature by an Officer of the company, and if the requester is an Officer, it requires the CEO's signature. As the Chief Executive, the CEO is authorized to sign his own requests. HOWEVER, all of these forms are provided to the Audit Committ
Re:Why Gen Z Needs To Change for Work (Score:5, Insightful)
You're telling him he can't?
Absolutely! Recently,my manager was on holiday and our director walks into the room with a small Android phone and said "Can you connect the new chairmans smartphone to the hospital network?" It was not a request.
I was able to go up and say "No" without any qualms. I think the lady on the HelpDesk might not have felt so free to do this. I have previously given similar replies to new directors, doctors and (medical) consultants. It requires me to be able to quote the official policies. That is part of my job.
No, I am not a manager. I do not wear a suit to work. I do not even wear a tie. I am the guy who fixes things. Telling people that they cannot connect their own iphone, netbook, fondleslab or USB toy to a corporate network is basic security. If you have no confidential data to look after perhaps the thought of virus, trojan or spyware ridden systems connecting up to your network does not worry you. If 17% of companies have nothing they need to protect, that is up to them.
Re:Why Gen Z Needs To Change for Work (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, I've heard this thing several times over the last year. all these "innovators" talking about how the next generation of "digital natives" will need to work on their ipads while posting everything on facebook and twitter, but I just don't get it. Why? I don't think the average work environment is so short of people as to be that desperate.
In fact, my place is in the middle of cutting costs by 40%, so why would they then bend over backwards massively changing internal policy and introducing risk to attract inexperienced, self entitled oiks who by their own admission, want to spend most of the day on facebook rather than actually doing any work?
Thing is, the company is the one paying the bills, and taking the risks. Where is the business advantage to most businesses to do this? I admit that some more specialised industries that regularly take high skilled graduates may want to do this, but for most industries, i don't see what they'll get out of it?
dave
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But ... but ... they only handed me this dated blackberry crap and my Android/iPhone is so much cooler!
Re:Why Gen Z Needs To Change for Work (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, no matter what the generation, they should not be allowed to bring more attack vectors and security vulnerabilities in to the workplace.
They are not special snowflakes, and their personal devices are not necessary for productivity.
Businesses where mobile devices are useful and helpful should already have their infrastructures designed to handle it, so again Gen Z will make no difference.
Sure, you tell the salesman who brings in 150k of business a week for your company that he can't use his new toys to keep track of his contacts. He talks to his boss about the fat guy in IT that drains company resources by depriving him of valuable tools. And then reminds his boss that he makes all the sales that actually pay for IT to exist.
See how long it takes to change policy. Unless you're in non-profit or government, the folks making the money are the folks calling the shots.
Re:Why Gen Z Needs To Change for Work (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, you tell the salesman who brings in 150k of business a week for your company that he can't use his new toys to keep track of his contacts. He talks to his boss about the fat guy in IT that drains company resources by depriving him of valuable tools. And then reminds his boss that he makes all the sales that actually pay for IT to exist.
See how long it takes to change policy. Unless you're in non-profit or government, the folks making the money are the folks calling the shots.
If this is the kind of response you're getting when you say "no," then you're not very good at the human side of IT.
In most large organizations I've worked at that have had a functioning IT department, there is a CIO or technology manager whose job it is to listen to both the requests made by employees (especially those made by supervisors and executives) and then listen to the issues presented by the IT personnel who understand the technical issues. This person will then make a decision based on the benefits to the company and the costs and risks (and laws) which impact the business. They then formulate an answer, and present it in such a way that those who disagree with it (either IT or the requester) understand why the decision is what it is and why it must be the way that has been decided. In a well run organization, this IT manager understands that part of the responsibility of IT is to protect the business from employees and to protect the IT employees from compromising situations. In an idea situation, the CEO will back the CIO when questions about technical decisions arise.
In the situation you present, I would say "Additional services often require additional infrastructure and require additional time to maintain and service. I do not know enough about this specific technology, and I would like to investigate it for you and determine what our business needs will be. It would be irresponsible of me to set this up without fully understanding exactly what it's going to do. I do not want to risk not being able to fix it if it doesn't work or if it has problems in use."
Usually the response will be "But I just [...]" or "It's only [...]". Some people interpret this as being told what to do by someone who doesn't understand the job. That line of thinking, however, is fueled by ego and leads towards conflict. For my part, I just think they're trying to talk you out of saying "no." People are conditioned to think that if they don't hear "Yes I'll do that immediately" then the answer is "no." I try to answer "I understand why you want this done. I can see the benefits. I just want to make sure that I can do it right so you can actually reap those rewards."
At this point you're being really reasonable. People are also conditioned to accept a reasonable response, because they know that being unreasonable is likely to harm them more than anything else.
This gives you something you need: time. Time to build evidence for your case. You can collect the details of what would be required and what the costs would be (including additional infrastructure and additional personnel if there would be a lot of support). Now when you say "no" you have evidence for why your answer is the correct one, and if they say "do it anyway" you can show them what you need (which, again, is reasonable). Without evidence and documentation, you're just butting your ego against the executive, and that doesn't work when you start in a subordinate position. It's very difficult, however, for any person -- no matter how unreasonable -- to continue to flatly argue when you can show them a document which lists the costs in time and money you will require.
On some occasions, you will meet people who start out butting ego. Regardless of what you say or how reasonable your response, they will not be happy. They will continue to state that their request is really quite simple and extremely important, and will ignore anything you say that doesn't meet with their demands. From your
I don't think so (Score:3)
It doesn't matter what generation anyone belongs to -- you'll do things the way the employer wants them done, or you won't be employed.
Now, are there some new technologies that are in common use in the consumer market that can be used effectively in the business environment? Probably, yes. And businesses will use them if it makes sense in their environment. But they won't use them because the pouty-faced punks with their newly-minted college degrees will throw a hissy-fit if the boss doesn't let them use their personal gadgets.
Business don't give a damn about their current employees, let alone potential future employees. You'll do as you're told if you want the money... and eating is such an addictive hobby.
Of course, young people just might start up their own businesses where everyone can stay focused on their iWhatevers all day, and if it's better than the old businesses than the young folks will win. I wouldn't put my money in their stock, though.
Re:I don't think so (Score:4, Interesting)
"It doesn't matter what generation anyone belongs to -- you'll do things the way the employer wants them done, or you won't be employed."
This is not true, nor is it ideal. If a whole generation of people, or even half of that generation, is willing to continually break the rules to use their own devices, employers cannot commence with the wholesale termination of half their labor force. Production would grind to a halt. There would be economic turmoil.
No, if they're smart, employers will find a way to use the workers own technology as free capital.
This is not only a shift in technology, but a whole generation of people communicate differently! Every new mode of communication has been disruptive of the previous: post disrupted the courier, telegraph disrupted post, telephone disrupted telegraph, electronic mail disrupted all the previous, and now we have technologies to send visual as well as text along (PDF attachments, for example) that have disrupted hitherto necessarily paper documents -- are we at all surprised that text messaging, twitter, and facebook should disrupt elements of previous forms of communication?
This is not a question of "what will employers allow" but rather "how do people communicate".
Re:I don't think so (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing about kids is that they are never even half of your workforce and their are usually plenty more where you found the ones you've got now.
The ones that can't get over facebook make good waiters/waitresses.
Employers only need to deal with one year of new hires per year.
On the other hand if a companies business model is 'Facebook/twitter users are stupid attention whores, we separate stupid people from their money.' their might be value in allowing work access to facebook and twitter.
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If they're smart, employers would just lay off these layabouts with entitlement issues. If the kiddies can't learn to talk normally, no company should be forced to deal with it. With the baby-boom surge there will be a large employable base of people so that corporations won't be subject to extortion by the self-esteem generation.
Re:I don't think so (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not true, nor is it ideal. If a whole generation of people, or even half of that generation, is willing to continually break the rules to use their own devices, employers cannot commence with the wholesale termination of half their labor force. Production would grind to a halt. There would be economic turmoil.
No they won't engage in wholesale termination they will identify a few people they don't like for whatever reason that was not really good enough to justify firing them before, and make a lot of noise like "John Doe" was insubordinate and violated or policy. The rest of you are on notice!
And the rest of em will realize that the job market is still tough and getting caned because "I could not respect my employers desire for me not to have my IPad on their network is kinda stupid. " Much better to keep collecting that check every two weeks so I can buy toys to play with at home.
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If you are in a market where qualified technical workers are a dime a dozen, sure, you can try and do it your way. But if you do it like this you will find both recruitment AND retainment increasingly problematic. And HR *will* put the blame on IT, if they're not completely stupid. Given the shortages in qualified IT-workers, this movement towards more personalized devices on the network will have to be accomodated.
Consider it an opportunity to secure your network for real. Come on: having the security on t
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Bull - Shit.
If what you say is true, we would still all be wearing suits, working on green screen terminals, and getting printout vis the teletype.
"I wouldn't put my money in their stock, though."
too bad, they are going to have the smart people who make this work. And it's not as hard as people think.
Not going to happen (Score:3)
This will not happen in the US outside of some niche industries. Companies have too much legal exposure to take the risk some porn site malware is logging credit card info from all the customers the support people helped today.
I don't know the laws in the UK, but I suspect the same would apply.
Article Summary (Score:2)
1st page: Kids want to use their computers/gadgets at work.
2nd page: These kids are clueless as to how IT really works and unemployable.
Pure insanity (Score:2)
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And companies that support confidential or secure environments, like where I work, don't even allow cell phones with cameras (or other such devices). Some areas/places even require that one leave *all* their personal electronic devices offsite. Yes, the "real world" might be a shock to Gen Z...
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Yeah. I used to work t one of those. No personal electronics allowed on the company Intranet. But every exec (and pretty soon, most of the engineering employees) were provided company laptops. Which they all took to visit vendors and customers. And to Starbucks to connect to the free WiFi. And eventually home, where the kids would play with them, download warez and whatnot. Then mom/dad would take the laptop back to work the next day. And our IT dept. never could figure out how all this crap got through our
Really? (Score:2)
Big businesses are going to have to become more flexible about how IT is provisioned and managed.
At my job (where I work in the IT department), if they need a device to do their job they're more than welcome, and even encouraged, to ask their director to fund it for them, in which case we'll be happy to provide them with a device we can control on our corporate network that allows them to do the job they were hired for. If they need it to do their job properly, we'll make sure they get it. No need to use their own personal (and potentially insecure and uncontrolled on our network) device they paid for
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At my work, yes, we would definitely support your needs if that's what we require of you.
I'm actually a web developer too (with admin/network management as backup to the other guys), and while I don't have quite as many platforms to develop for as you, all my needs are met to support what I do need to develop for. It's what I was hired to do, so the tools I need to perform that job are provided. If tomorrow we have more needs that I'll have to develop for, the tools I require to do that will be budgeted for
This attitude seems to miss the point, somewhat (Score:2)
When I hear people saying "the next big thing" is people bringing in their own devices, my first reaction is that those people are assuming that using their personal devices will be "better", because they won't be locked-down the way managed IT hardware is. But I don't see how that's significantly different or better than just giving employees admin/root access to their own machines. At least with the latter, the devices aren't going back and forth between the (hopefully) firewalled/proxied corporate enviro
And ... There You Go (Score:2)
Most of the comments before this one are a good example of the attitude of your average IT person toward this whole "personal equipment" thing.
Me, I work at a different company, where we decided to treat employees like responsible adults. We make sure people know how to secure their equipment and, if they want (and usually they do), we do it for them. If they want supported equipment, they choose between a wide selection of equipment choices (desktop/laptop, pc/mac/linux); if they want to be responsible f
Why IT Needs To Change for Gen Z (Score:3)
Because "gen Z" is even thicker than "gen Y"?
Yes, companies are way too uptight about security. After all, it's not like there have been a lot of breakins or anything.
BTW what comes after "Gen Z"? Oh. Wait. The Rapture was yesterday. Nevermind.
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what comes after "Gen Z"
"Gen [", of course.
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There is no "Gen Z", or "Gen Y" for that matter. Gen X was a one time name, the only one to ever be named with a letter. The next generation is the millennials, sometimes split into early and late millennials, depending on whether you were born before or after 1990. The one after that will probably be named sometime in the next ten to twenty years. Trying to keep the lettering thing going is stupid, obviously short-sighted, and misses the entire reason why Gen X was named as it was.
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IT needs to change for Gen Z, because Gen Z is too stupid to change for IT.
Experts are like standards (Score:2)
Seriously, these ones have no great insight - they're merely guessing. But what they're guessing is what will make a good story in 2011, not what will happen in years to come - when their guesses have been forgotten, superceeded, revived, altered, discredited and forgotten again. They have no great insight, or knowledge of what's to come and are really only useful for entertainment - such as posting equally ignorant replies to.
This is not going to work (Score:2)
I am system administrator on my work laptop, but this is something most people will not be able to handle. If any kind of personal data is on these machines, they need to be secured far beyond what a normal user can do. In some industries, e.g. banking, using you own machine will still be completely out of the question. I predict that with the additional data breaches that are to be expected for the near future, most people will instead of on their own devices work on company devices that are even more lock
The users have to change too (Score:4)
I work in IT security and I have been told in no uncertain terms what my job is by upper management.
They don't want to find themselves having to put something in the notes to the financials that our trade secrets have leaked, or that our competitors no our costs. They don't want to be embarrassed and have to apologize for leaking customer data. We are a manufacturing company we sell tools to professionals they expect us to be professions as well as look it. Management does not want to look like Sony.
I don't get off on saying "no" to people. I really don't but if I let a device be connected to the network I have to be able to know DLP policies are being followed. That means I probably have to have more control over your toys than you want me to have, or you have to settle less than great experiences. No you can't read e-mail on your IPhone APP, you can use Citrix to read it in Notes via your IPhone, and yes that probably is to painful to be worth while. We can't afford a large cached copy of your mail file to be sitting on a device you might lose which *may* be recoverable by its next possessor.
Your personal laptop, certainly if you let me put our full disk encryption software on it, and our endpoint policy enforcement tools and only IT Security gets root. You won't like that though, and I know it. Trouble is I don't have better solutions.
oh? (Score:2)
If iPads and iPhones were work friendly (Score:2)
they might have a place where I work. However they are not. See Apple has this one major problem. If the iOs device has an invalid password for a network it was previously connected to it will not prompt the user for the correct password, it will simply keep attempting to connect which in most shops locks out the account. This has caused a great amount of grief with the network people where they now simply tell people - no support. Please buy an Android device or Blackberry to get your mail and/or access th
This has been coming for a while (Score:2)
Big businesses are going to have to become more flexible about how IT is provisioned and managed...
That's been true for years and it still isn't happening. Most companies don't even have their network segmented to make that possible. If they were working toward that end, they'd be separating the data from the network and isolating critical systems. It's not happening in many places I've seen.
Gotta Love it (Score:2)
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lockers (Score:2)
ie, Gen Z needs to learn that they don't get
unsurprisingly, IT goons don't get it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Wake up!
You are a cost center.
You exist only to enable productive people to produce more efficiently.
You aren't in charge of anything.
You work for us.
Continue to annoy us and you will be replaced.
Just like the guy in the tool room that used to guard the pin gauges and the hammers like he owned them.
And the facilities guy who refused to add a 30 Amp circuit or run a Nitrogen line.
The IT support model that treats everyone like a serf doing word processing is over.
The design engineers need nonstandard hardware
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And we will all snicker as you are shown the door for bringing in your latest whiz-bang gadget and all the crud on it that infects the network and puts the whole thing down for a few days.
I manage change, I don't fight it. I will let your new whiz bang toy onto the network but you can bet your sweet ass that every packet it sends and receives is monitored and recorded and when the network goes down it is your packet trace I will be showing to the CEO and then he will fire your dumb ass when all of the rest
unsurprisingly, administrivia goons don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
IT people are the guys who keep the baddies out of the COMPANY network, the one that you want to connect all your little toys to. They're the ones who are charged with producing the most stuff from the least money, which requires common standards so they don't have to spend hours or days trying to work out why some manager didn't/couldn't read the 1-page of instructions with his/her latest trinket and set it up wrong.
The point is, we all work for the shareholders and they don't care if you want to use your latest little phone to access stuff. They want the lowest cost of operation, the fewest number of lawsuits for data loss and data thefts and they don't want different individuals craching their company on a daily basis just so they can show off some new status symbol.
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jacks0n may have been overly harsh, but he makes a good point. A friend of mine was in a certain air force, and his officer once addressed the group. Paraphrased, he said that their only job is to deliver missiles, and if you're not delivering missiles you better be making it easier for somebody to do that. IT is the same: your job is to enable by default, and disable only when you absolutely must. Now, whe
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In my experience the biggest problem with corporate IT is risk aversion. Process is a substitute for trusted personnel, because it is hard to have the latter in a large organization, and it is easy to have the former.
If there is a massive security breach, the head of IT is likely to get fired over it (or maybe somebody one level down/etc). However, just about anybody in IT is capable of leaving open a door that would allow such a breach. So, there are tons of rules to try to prevent this, and tons of chec
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"Many of us users understand every aspect of your network as well or better than you do,
we just have better things to do."
Many of you think you do. Most of you don't have a fucking clue about the big picture.
Part of our job is to provide you the tools you need to be as productive as possible as conveniently as possible.
The other part is to secure data, and ensure reliability.
Naturally like any interesting job, these two objectives are at cross purposes. Lean too far either way and the business is sunk.
"Hey,
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Pretty much what I was thinking, yes.
Structures in companies, especially old and big companies, tend to be rigid. Changing them doesn't take years. It takes decades. GenY'ers will probably be used to carrying around their own computer-in-the-pocket (with their cellphones and pads that do by now easily double as computers), only to notice that these devices will not be allowed in corporation networks.
Bluntly, I don't think corporations will change. They will force YOU to change and adapt to their way of thin
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The biggest entitlement problem with people and their own devices is they feel like they can use their work time for personal phone calls, tweeting, updating their facebook status, IMing, etc. The policy should be more like steal the company's time, your frickin' fired!
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The biggest entitlement problem with people and their own devices is they feel like they can use their work time for personal phone calls, tweeting, updating their facebook status, IMing, etc. The policy should be more like steal the company's time, your frickin' fired!
Sure, I agree with that. So long as the company recognizes that I'm not going to work on their projects on MY time. Lunch? Mine. Breaks? Mine. And I'll do whatever I want on my time - unless they want to pay for it. Then, well, it's not my time anymore.
Now, in all the bigger companies I've worked at, this hasn't been a problem. But when I jumped ship to a small (ish) business, the boss suddenly decided that he could bother me any time of day, no matter what I was doing, so long as I was at the office.
Su
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Funny. I once worked for a company that did exactly the opposite: Do what you want, when you want, how you want. If you don't get your work done, you're fired.
This of course requires a boss who knows exactly what to (sensibly) expect from his workers. Something quite rare in management to be honest, but in this one company it actually worked. You got your assignment and a fairly reasonable deadline. Sure, sometimes projects run longer and you get an extension. Do it all the time and start looking for a new
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email+calendar, then IM and (video-)phone, and then documents and apps, from easier to more difficult/riskier.
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Does the writer of the summary actually work? An iPhone is just a phone. On my floor alone, I think there are dozens of people with iPhones (myself included). No network needs to change, either you're on 3G or Edge ... What does this have to do with the company?
Agreed. So what if I can't network my device? I use HSPA for all my data needs, and look at my computer when I need to check my appointments. When I'm at work, I check the work computer for my appointments. If I don't have appointments ... I'm at work anyways. It doesn't matter if I can't check my personal device for my work calendar - I know my work hours, and I'll check my schedule when I'm there. Even better, I've only ever received ONE call at 10pm from my boss who *needed* something done in the AM be
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Hush, codemonkey.
I know well how much you want that 12 gig i7 rig to ... well, to do what? Save a second per compile? Learn to code and don't rely on the compiler and linker to find your glaring syntax errors! The next codemonkey that tells me it's too time consuming to compile on his "old" machine should be fired on the spot!
(well? How does it feel?)
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Hush, codemonkey.
I know well how much you want that 12 gig i7 rig to ... well, to do what? Save a second per compile? Learn to code and don't rely on the compiler and linker to find your glaring syntax errors! The next codemonkey that tells me it's too time consuming to compile on his "old" machine should be fired on the spot!
(well? How does it feel?)
Hush, BOFH. You havn't left your cave in years, and it's been even longer than that since you've felt the sweet caress of human contact. You don't really know what goes on in the world anymore, and you just keep screaming at us to get off your lawn.
Seriously though. There is a line between "working with the tools you have" and "working with the tools that were purchased 10 years ago when the company opened up". Sure, they both compile just fine. But if you're paying me $40k a year to program, can't you
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