Security Fears Prod Firms to Limit Staff Web Use 242
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Companies are limiting employees' use of free Internet services, such as Skype and video downloading, to protect themselves from viruses, communications traffic jams and regulatory missteps, the Wall Street Journal reports. ABN Amro's global head of strategy and engineering tells the WSJ, 'I'm not allowing Skype because I don't know what it does.' Some colleges and departments at Cambridge University also ban Skype. The limits affect executives as well as the rank-and-file, the WSJ finds: ' "I used to think nothing of checking my Yahoo mail several times a day," says Global Crossing Chief Marketing Officer Anthony Christie. Now that he can't, his long workday makes it hard to avoid using his work email account for personal messages, he says.'"
Oh noes (Score:3, Insightful)
What's next? Complaining that you can't use company funds to go on a vacation? Complaining that you can't use company computers to play games?
Re:Oh noes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Insightful)
The prison administration knows about the black market, in case you were wondering. Sure they do. They probably know as much about my business as I do myself. They live with it because they know that a prison is like a big pressure cooker, and there have to be vents somewhere to let off steam. They make the occasional bust, and I've done time in solitary a time or three over the years, but when it's something like posters, they wink. Live and let live. And when a big Rita Hayworth went up in some fishie's cell, the assumption was that it came in the mail from a friend or a relative. Of course all the care-packages from friends and relatives are opened and the contents inventoried, but who goes back and re-checks the inventory sheets for something as harmless as a Rita Hayworth or an Ava Gardner pin-up? When you're in a pressure-cooker you learn to live and let live or somebody will carve you a brand-new mouth just above the Adam's apple. You learn to make allowances.
Same goes here. Bad employee morale is definitely bad for business, because it's across the board. The guy who spends all day browing google video will eventually get discovered when his productivity tanks. It's not worth it to make everyone else in the company unhappy.
Re:Oh noes (Score:2, Insightful)
Sound in theory, but what if your paid to be on call for 8 hours? Help desk type stuff. I'd go batshit insane if everything was locked down so hard that I couldn't relax a bit in the lulls between calls.
And don't say "work on other projects" because when you have to be able to break off your thought process at the sound of a ring, it's nigh impossible to really focus on something complex.
You start finding little things made out o
Re:Oh noes (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you think people did before computers, or today in places where there are no computers to play on? When your employer buys you a computer, it's a tool to do your job, you can't expect anything more, no more than you can expect entertainment from a screwdriver or a hole puncher.
Re:Oh noes (Score:2, Funny)
Well, I wouldn't know...but I do doubt that I would have been working a help desk for computer support. heh.
Re:Oh noes (Score:2, Funny)
Well, Einstein was working as a patent clerk when he came up with the relativity theories. Everyone does something to break the boredom. Einstein solves the mysteries of the universe, I post to slashdot. (I know, I am hopeless, I will never be able to finish my grand unified theorem which involves lots of nude ladies and milk chocolate cream).
Re:Oh noes (Score:2)
Are you hiring?
Re:Oh noes (Score:2)
Re:Oh noes (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, people could be chained to their desks and allowed 3 5-minute bathroom breaks and a 15-minute lunchbreak. That's all they need, think of the productivity increase! We could use children, too!
Oh wait, I think they have labor laws now.
What happened to having a pleasant workplace where you enjoy what you do? Little things make a lot of difference. I'm not talking dot-com era overindulgence, but personal email access is not too much to ask.
Most people spend at least 8 hours of their waking day, during the prime of their wakefulness, at work. It should not be too much to ask for this to be a pleasant time: people who enjoy being at work get stuff done and are more loyal than those who hate where they are, what they do, everyone around them, and the company.
Re:Oh noes (Score:3, Insightful)
But that's already the case with both the phone on your desk and the cell phone / gsm in your pocket - and yet most of us don't spend our days yakking with our friends - in fact, w
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Insightful)
IM is just a faster form of e-mail, and (just like e-mail) it requires discipline not to fritter away the company's time "talking" on it all day. But there have been quite a few instances where my COO or a trainer shoots off an IM during a presentation with a question. IM is useful in that it is quick and discrete.
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Insightful)
Complaining that the shackles won't let you move more than 3 feet from your desk?
Tell ya what, if I can't use the company phone/email to make that doctor's appointment or let my wife know I'll be home late, well, I'm leaving for the day, and you can fuck your deadline and TPS reports.
I work because it is necessary to maintain my life. I do not work so I can maintain yours. If we cannot formulate a reasonable social contract where we both benfit our lives by pooling our resources you will have to do without me. I am neither your mommy nor your slave.
KFG
KFG
Re:Oh noes (Score:2)
Job Qualifications (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, just, wow. And here I thought that the "anything I don't understand must be bad" school of management was going out of style.
Block by default. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not allowing X because I don't know what it does does not necessarily equate to X is bad
Banning an unknown service from a network is the more sensible default decision for a corporate network to take. Firewalls should block everything by default, corporate desktops should stop installations of anything not checked and cleared. Why should skype be any different?
That's what I do (Score:2)
As for what to allow users to do, that's changed as well. Years ago the network access was a perk of the job. But that has been cut ba
Re:Job Qualifications (Score:2)
Sometimes it can be overkill, but it is definatly a smart way to approach things if your security conscious.
Not necessarily as ignorant as it sounds (Score:3, Insightful)
You could use Filemon to make sure Skype's not reading your disk, and other tools to check whether it's keylogging, but a busy paranoid could be excused for not taking the trouble.
I sure wouldn't want to pay a sysadmin who allowed things on the network without knowing what they did.
(I use Skype at home but I'm not risking someone else's network by doing so).
Re:Job Qualifications (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Job Qualifications (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Job Qualifications (Score:2)
I'm putting on my hat... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes I wonder if this is exactly what companies *want*. They don't want people to use outside e-mail (especially ones running over https) because then they can't easily monitor what their staff is doing.
If people are using their work e-mail for their personal use, the company gets to see exactly what, where, how, and when their employees are spending their own time. If the employee opts to not use their work e-mail for anything personal, the company knows that they now have the other added benefit of possible added productivity.
I'm just glad I can use SSH and tunnel everything over that. If I can't do that, I have GPRS service on my mobile device and I *could* use that for AIM, e-mail, and browsing instead.
Re:I'm putting on my hat... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because we all know that treating staff as machines, and expecting them to work constantly throughout the day without taking the odd couple of minutes as a break now and then or dealing with an important personal matter, is definitely the way to increase productivity, right? :-/
Re:I'm putting on my hat... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that's the case at all. Most companies could really care less what an employee does in their off time so long as it doesn't harm the company. What they do care about is things like trade secrets going out via an anonymous hotmail account or employees wasting hours talking to their significant other and circumventing the phone system monitoring by using Skype.
I'm just glad I can use SSH and tunnel everything over that. If I can't do that, I have GPRS service on my mobile device and I *could* use that for AIM, e-mail, and browsing instead.
I think that's where things should be headed. A cell phone doesn't have easy access to corporate documents (though cameras do facilitate that to an extent) and typing a lengthy e-mail is difficult, so trade secret theft (intentional or otherwise) by employees might be reduced significantly.
Re:I'm putting on my hat... (Score:2)
My cell phone connects to my laptop and works as a modem, via infra-red or Bluetooth. It's trivial to drag-drop a file onto the phone.
Re:I'm putting on my hat... (Score:2)
As for CD burners...they didn't have any way to burn CDs. It required superuser login for a PC to
Re:I'm putting on my hat... (Score:2)
That's why Dell still sells a DVD reader on most business machines, instead of the writer that's probably cheaper in quantity.
Re:I'm putting on my hat... (Score:2)
I don't know about hotmail, but every webmail that I've used features https for that very reason...
Re:I'm putting on my hat... (Score:2)
That is exactly it. Most companies don't mind their employees doing limited personal business on company time, but whereas it's legal under the ECPA to monitor personal emails sent through the company email system, it's a felony to do so for personal emails sent outside that system, even if a company computer is used to access them.
If you make 'em use the compan
Re:I'm putting on my hat... (Score:4, Insightful)
After reviewing the logs for the month of probation we found the idea worked well for the first four days and then she added in her own IM accounts. While I could've made it tough for her to make any changes to GAIM I didn't because I refuse to treat adults like a forth grader. She was told that her IM sessions would be reviewed and not to add or remove any IM accounts, which she did, so she was fired.
The problem highlighted a possible future issue and we decided to require all employees to use a company related IM account just for company business. If they want to conduct personal IM conversations at work then they can use whatever other client they want. If an employee's performance is a problem and personal net access is high then they are put on "restricted access" for a month. So far the restricted access use has worked well and no one else has been fired for excesive personal net usage.
Moral of the story: Management needs to treat their employees like adults and not like children, let them use the net (IM, ssh, irc and most any web site since the only filtering we do is with prioxy) for personal tasks and work with those that don't follow the rules. So far everyone is fine with the rule because it is reasonable, allows for liberal personal net use and not draconian like most places. The only really strict rule is if you download and share any pron at work you're gone (to avoid an expensive sexual harassment suit).
Complete "no personal Internet use" rules just pisses people off and they will almost always find a way around it. Banning personal net access for minor abuses is like banning coffee because someone left an empty pot on a hot burner or a lunch room refrigerator because some people steal other peoples' lunches.
Re:I'm putting on my hat... (Score:2)
They don't want you to use outside email because email is the most common vector for various viruses and other malware, phishing scams, and other shenanigans. They're not going to trust some external, unknown entity to filter that crap out. And they're not going to be too thrilled when they have to
Re:I'm putting on my hat... (Score:2)
Look at the target demographic for the article. It isn't security people, technical people, firewall administrators. It's the frickin' Wall Street Journal.
A message from your employer (Score:4, Insightful)
We hope you enjoy working here. Please work hard and do some great work for us!
Thanks,
Your employer.
P.S. WE DON'T TRUST YOU.
Re:A message from your employer (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but people seem to do really really stupid stuff when they are feeling "put upon" by the "man". Or, just plain greed. Most Company's #1 security problem is their employees.
Obligatory bash quote (Score:4, Funny)
Like this guy? [bash.org]
Re:A message from your employer (Score:2)
In their defense, employees haven't given them a lot of reasons to trust them lately.
Re:A message from your employer (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, we dont trust you, applied to things like... cant surf n
Makes sense, at least from a business standpoint.. (Score:2)
That plus the standard, you're using company resources, blah blah.
My point?
Dunno, why did they write this story anyhow?
There is an alternative... (Score:2)
Re:There is an alternative... (Score:2)
Re:There is an alternative... (Score:2)
Re:There is an alternative... (Score:2)
Re:There is an alternative... (Score:2)
1. User laptop is docked and connected to the wired LAN
2. The laptop has a wireless card and sees an available access (maybe at the local coffee shop next door).
3. The user authenticates via Web interface or some other means to the Internet service at the coffee shop, but the coffee shop is not using WEP or WPA, leaving him wide open.
4. Some third party uses that client Wi-Fi connection to hack thro
Re:There is an alternative... (Score:2)
No-win scenario (Score:2)
Sounds like the heyday of Napster
ssh tunneling (Score:5, Informative)
Re:ssh tunneling (Score:2, Informative)
We've always done this (Score:2, Insightful)
Locking down net access at work makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
When these items cause problems that reduce productivity they have to go. It's that simple.
Due to unrestrained (and uninformed) users I now have to go over all 50 machines with a fine-tooth comb to scrub off the bad stuff. Several of these machines are probably going to have to be wiped. This is 100% due to user loaded "personal" software.
As I fix each machine they are getting locked down. I've been directed by management to prevent users from pirating music on company machines or using filesharing to share pirated music. I don't see anything unreasonable at all about that.
Any app that is well-behaved and does not expose the company to liability is fine with me. Otherwise it has to go.
This type of admin is the bane of users (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This type of admin is the bane of users (Score:2, Informative)
Excellent points (Score:2)
I can see ITs side of things. I just wish more admins took the time to see things from the other point of view. I wonder how many IT guys have the same restrictions on the boxes they use on a daily basis as they place on their users?
Anyway, thanks for the
Re:This type of admin is the bane of users (Score:5, Insightful)
Listen you selfish malcontent, letting you put whatever the hell you want on the company computers potentionally puts the company and its directors at risk. When your P2P music crap, or cracked shareware linefeed-corrector gets noticed by the suppliers it can cause huge problems and expenses for the company just to satiate your little cubicle fiefdom. IT admins and directors need to worry about far more than just your "getting the job done" easier. The reality is there is a lot of damage and liability these days which can come out of users free-reign over the office computers.
Don't like it? Fine, resign and start your own consulting business. Then you can put whatever crap you want on your own equipment.
Re:This type of admin is the bane of users (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, by and large that is, indeed, the job of IT admins and directors. To allow the people who are actually creating the stuff (or marketing it, or selling it) to do their jobs in a way that optimizes the employee's time.
Re:This type of admin is the bane of users (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong - I dislike this attitude too. I buck the system myself. But I also see where its coming from.
The problem isn't you and your FrameScript. Its the guy in the neighboring office who insists on installing BonzaiBuddy, Weatherbug, runs the latest joke attachment, and otherwise executes any other flashy trojan paraded in front of his cursor. I take that
Agree--my comment oversimplified. (Score:2)
I know it's impossible, but it would be nice if there was a way to figure out what level of permissions to give a particular user... is that too much like a license to operate a computer?
Re:This type of admin is the bane of users (Score:4, Insightful)
Think of it as the "OMG Ponies!" crowd, writ large. You just have no idea how freaking stupid these people can be.
Even in the best and brightest companies I've worked in, there have always been a few that got hired that knew a lot less about their PCs than they thought. In particular, they do not appear to hire salespeople for raw brainpower. The clueless users, especially the ones that don't realize (and never will) that they ARE clueless, cause enormous trouble. Unless the network is internally firewalled (which is getting to be a better and better idea, these days), they're often the vectors for network-wide infection.
The draconian policies of some admins may seem stupid, but remember that admins run on fear. They are, by and large, only noticed when things break, and then everyone is mad at them. When a single user can potentially bring a virus into the network that can stop the entire company dead in its tracks, well... it's a heck of a lot safer and easier to just lock EVERYTHING down and then install what people need, as they ask for it.
Think of it as a default-deny firewall.
Re:This type of admin is the bane of users (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This type of admin is the bane of users (Score:4, Informative)
Find out how to get the software approved and do it. Go through the proper channels.
99.9% of corporate users should not have administrative access to their computers. There is no need to.
Easier said than done, I'm afraid... (Score:2)
Re:This type of admin is the bane of users (Score:3, Informative)
DEvelopers... oh im sure you are perfectly FINE with it, but its not you who has to waste his time re imaging a machine now is it>?
We had one developer join a few months ago. The first day his machine was owned. I said ok, your a dev you have admin rights, be careful, etc.. Reimaged his machine.
2 days later, owned again. So owned it just bluescreens on startup. I say, Ok sorry hav
That wasn't all serious (Score:2)
There's a fundamental disconnect between what (some) IT departments think is their job and what the rest of us believe is the function of IT. My view, which I don't think is unreasonable, the IT department has the job of helping support the rest of the company. That means helping ensure that the sales guy's laptop is virus free so he can sell product, keeping the network infrastructure runni
Re:Locking down net access at work makes sense (Score:2)
Not even the fact that it's impossible?
Or do you also glue shut the CD drives, weld over the USB, and so on?
Sensible (Score:5, Insightful)
If your employees only need particular websites and particular applications to do their jobs, then why would you willingly open up additional attack vectors? It's a completely unnecessary business risk.
If you have employees complaining about needing to use personal email (what did they do before email in the workplace was common?), then simply set up a shared cheap PC in the coffee room for them to use on their lunch break. Firewall it off so that when all the inevitable crap gets onto the machine, it doesn't affect any important systems.
Re:Sensible (Score:2)
How much of a business risk is the lack of innovation due to information starvation and the inability of employees to experience new tech? I can see a case for this with call center workers, whose job functions might be more akin to a piece of desktop hardware, but for employees that are expected to provide c
The Internet is not only for pr0n (Score:5, Informative)
If firms continue to be ignorant about new or alternative technologies then they will continue to be left behind. These savings can be significant over the long term, financially as well as productivity wise. Companies in the future will be split into two categories - those that embrace new technology and those that struggle under malinformed regimes run by beaurocrats who prefer the trusted path, the path of least resistance, over the newer, technologically superior one. I've seen this too many times than I'd care to remember.
Email access (Score:2)
Bandwidth always a worry at Cambridge (Score:3, Interesting)
The banning of Skype at some departments and colleges at Cambridge comes as no surprise to me.
I was at Cambridge during the late 90's-early Noughties, and I seem to recall a number of stern warnings to students about bandwidth usage from both College and University computing authorities. One of them even included a plea to use European or British mirrors as much as possible.
The shame is that while the Cambridge University Data Network [cam.ac.uk] had bandwidth to burn within Cambridge, it seems that the trouble was always further upstream on JANET [ja.net].
Things got so bad that there were rumours at the time that the poorer colleges were going to start charging their students for bandwidth. I never heard anything of it, and it didn't stop the proliferation of p2p (both in the form of Napster and samba shares) in my time there.
Re:Bandwidth always a worry at Cambridge (Score:2)
The accounting for Internet is paid by each individual College. So they pay for student excess.
So why not block/filter these services? Skype and p2p "borrow" bandwidth. A student installs Skype for their _own_ purpose. The student has imposed an outside demand on the college network. The student will in general not have a grasp of what extra load they have imposed on the college network. How much of a load is determined solely by the
Re:Bandwidth always a worry at Cambridge (Score:2, Informative)
I work as a software developer for a department at Cambridge.
We are part of a distributed project, with team members in other institutes within the UK and around the world.
We use both Skype and Jabber to collaborate with each other.
Good plan (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect a few hundred flames of this statement, but it's a rock-solid security policy. Yes, this guy probably "should" know what Skype is in most people's opinions, but his default "deny" policy for anything he doesn't know is correct, and that attitude WILL prevent trouble. On a corporate network, especially one potentially carrying any kind of sensitive data, anything not specifically allowed should be denied. If employees can make a case about what any new service is and why they need it, it can be evaluated and perhaps allowed, but it should be denied by default.
He said "know what it does" (Score:3, Insightful)
It uses a proprietary closed protocol, nicely encypted; is adept at getting through firewalls and most important can turn office PCs into high-traffic relays without warning and without the abili
Re:He said "know what it does" (Score:2)
Lots of undocumented protocols right there in the default install. Also encrypted.
Riot in Cubicle Block #9 (Score:2)
News at 11.
This is what you can do... (Score:2)
At work, they block a bunch of ports. I would simply set up SSH tunnels through the HTTP proxy to my server back home, an
IM and Web blocking at GE (Score:4, Interesting)
And I can understand why. By only allowing communications through official chanels, the companies can better protect themselves by doing such things as applying corporate wide virus checking on emails. It also provides a log as to what communications occurred when. Though I do admit that flash drives and take home laptops can easily bypass any of these measures.
One downside to this is that the corporate policies also block VPN accesses, so I can not get to my offices servers while at the GE location.
One amusing anecdote relating to this is that where I work there is an analog phone line kept for the times when you really need to dial up a system. One lunch time I was using it to send some private email and also to chat with some friends (MSN messenger I think). When I was done I just picked my laptop up and walked back to my desk and plugged into the corporate lan without powering down. I was surprised when 20 minutes later one of my friends initiated a chat session with me. After the shock of chatting from my desk wore off, I realised that the chat program used two separate protocols/ports: 1 for logging into the chat system, and another for the actual chatting. The corporate IT people had only blocked one system and not the other, perhaps in the belief that that was all that was necessary. Combined with the chat system not timing out during the walk back to my desk, I had effectively bypassed their strong security.
Re:IM and Web blocking at GE (Score:2)
Idiots (Score:2)
Instead, he should appoint a security expert, who in turn would take measures to protect the security of the company. Just switching to an alternate internet browser would rid them of tons of viruses.
Re:Idiots (Score:2)
And you can't guarentee that the IT department will attempt to overrule the boss'es decision. The arguments for keeping the major contenders at bay are:
- P2P: Even if "low bandwidth", they hurt the router's performance levels as it has to keep track of a hundred or so connections. If there's too many connections, it hurts the company.
- Videos, music and other multimedia: These thing
I installed Skype while working for a Swiss bank (Score:4, Interesting)
When I got back to work on Monday, my Thinkpad was taken away and reformatted, and handed back to me -- without local admin privileges.
Now I work for a University. It's a whole other world.
SOP for the financial service sector (Score:2)
And for all of you people whining about your company not trusting you, they shouldn't. You shouldn't trust them either. I expect both parties to take advantage of each other to the fullest extent allowable by law. Where I come from they call that "business".
Re:SOP for the financial service sector (Score:2)
If not, then there's a double standard involved, and it's fairly stupid to ban IM under the guise of recording requirements if you don't ban phone conversations.
OMG, when will it end.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ummm, perhaps its just me, but it is about fscking time that both government and businesses learn the lessons that have been sitting in front of them since about 1991... computers are here to stay, and the advantages and disadvantages of computers are here to stay too.... Its not that hard to limit outside network connections to a specific bandwidth, or monitor all packets in and out... this is not rocket science. Using draconian measures to squeeze every drop out of the company resources is not good for business... see Boycott, Company Stores et al, slavery,
I guess my point is that anything that stifles free and unfettered flow of information and ideas is going to stifle business productivity and innovation. I don't have links, but I thought this was pretty much already scientifically proven... or at least proven in the advent of F/OSS and what it has done to the computer and software markets. Just as the *AA needs to wake up and find a new business model, most of the rest of the business world has some work to do... its just common sense. Anything else usually involves putting holes in your feed with lead ladden projectiles.
Ogg still gets through (Score:2, Informative)
What is happening (Score:3, Interesting)
Here is my take on what is happening. As network management tools become easier to use and more widely deployed, more and more people are starting to have a real understanding of their management and business networks. It used to be that the network engineers might or might not have a good idea about what kinds of traffic were flowing where. Now, a middle manager with only the most basic idea of how networks work can log into a Web interface and see what programs are being run by what people, connecting to what sites. As a result, they are more prone to hand down policy decisions based upon this new information.
At the same time, the workplace has become much more mercenary. Companies don't take care of their employees and employees just want to milk companies for as much as possible. No one trusts anyone. Managers want to get as much work out of their hirelings as possible and many don't care about the health, stress, happiness, etc. of those employees. In sociological terms, they are imposing physical barriers in an attempt to replace crumbling social ones. The problem for them, is they are usually way behind the technology curve. An employee who wants to play hardball can probably raid the company for all the info they want and carry it out on their cellphone or iPod. It's like moving from an honor system where captured soldiers swear they will stay until ransomed, to a military jail with as many bars as possible, except the prison is designed by a bureaucratic committee, each member of which is just trying to make as much money off of kickbacks and saved funds as possible. Time will tell which is more effective.
Cmon now (Score:2)
Employee != Serf (Score:2)
Re:Employee != Serf (Score:2)
The reason you go to work is to do work. The outside world impinging upon your work time is acceptable and often necessary, but if you are by your own choice going off and engaging in things that aren't part of your job during the time that you have agreed to work, then you need to inform your employer so that they can stop paying you. It's a simple matter of keeping your word: a contract is no less a promise tha
Re:Employee != Serf (Score:2)
Nothing new (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not surprised (Score:2)
My mortgage was recently sold to ABN. Based on their website and online payment functionality, this comment doesn't surprise me.
It's very simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Because of all the attack vectors, we have to spend many tens of thousands of dollars on antivirus, monitoring software, desktop security agents, intrusion detection, firewalls and what have you...
Things like SOX and HIPAA make it extremely hard for us to "just let users be". We can't allow unmanaged VoIP or instant messenging. FTP? Blocked. SSH? Blocked. Our data could easily walk out of here, which is why on top of the layer 3 blocks, we block USB access as well. Our users are given the tools they need to get their jobs done. And if data can walk out of here, there is certainly possiblity that something nasty could come in. We'd rather not have to deal with that possibility, so we make sure we don't have to.
It's the company's network, they can dictate how its used. Don't like it? Don't use our network. Go home, do whatever you want on your equipment, but when you're in my house, it's my rules.
I'm seeing a lot of lazy Admins in this discussion (Score:2, Flamebait)
I've grown especially wearing of id10T's like the one from ABN. "I don't allow Skype because I don't know what it does." Well dumbass. The blackhats
Re:Several big mistakes in the article (Score:2)
IIRC in my past duties as sysadmin I really did not want anyone downloading legitimately available spy^H^H^Hsoftware from anywhere and installing it on their machines.
Re:I don't allow $SOFTWARE because I'm an... (Score:2)
But, um... (Score:2)
It sounds more like the "global head of strategy and engineering" is an MBA suit who has very little exposure to the technology he oversees.
Re:You've stumbled onto the point of the exercise (Score:2)
It's technology he's not overseeing... that's the entire reason why it's getting restricted in the first place. Seems plenty logical to me. I'm impressed by both your hypothetical boss's fashion sense and the fact that he's more sensible, apparently, than his employees.
Re:Skype?!? I'm still waiting for IM (and wi-fi) ! (Score:2)
So, what you're saying here is, you haven't been fortunate enough to get a manager who's an idiot yet?
If you are a IT guy who gets a thrill out of locking down the computers so that the equipment is used for "work" only, then I want you to start monitoring all of my phone calls for personal use too.
It's generally done, and in most cases probably should be, as the employees involved generally agreed to