Young Employees Pose Increasing Risk to Networks

buzzardsbay writes "Baseline is reporting on an upcoming survey from Symantec and Applied Research-West that confirms many suspicions about the generation gap in the workplace, namely that younger workers will use your corporate network to run most any device, technology or social networking software they can get their hands on. Dubbed "Millenials," these workers born after 1980 are nearly twice as likely to use cell phones and PDAs at work, and half admit to installing unauthorized software on their employer's computers. On the upside, the Millenials are more security aware than their older co-workers."

Also...

[Mickyfin613]

They are more likely to play on your lawn. Make sure you yell at them from your front window. Damn kids.

Re:Funny that

[pastpolls]

You sound bitter that you have to start at the bottom like everyone else. Then again, maybe that is the problem some of us have with your generation.

Fair Trade

[multisync]

On the upside, the Millenials are more security aware than their older co-workers

They're also less likely to call IT with problems like "I'm trying to make an Internet on my desktop but I can't get the file to program."

Breaking News:

[jockeys]

This just in... young people are more likely to use iPods and PDAs than old people. Film at 11.

Re:I'm surprised how high the risk is anyway

[revlayle]

can you pay hell via a wire transfer?

Re:I'm surprised how high the risk is anyway

[Naosuke]

Of course you can, their routing number is 666, but you still run into the problem of getting the account number of whoever you are sending the money to. Also the dollar is incredibly weak against souls right now, so it's pretty expensive.

Re:What about the other half?

[ccguy]

Never crossed your mind that the other half don't, but are just as productive (or more so)?

No.

Maybe the other half can learn to use the authorized software instead of being so tied to one particular program and can't be bothered to learn something new.

OK OK, I'll give notepad another chance for my code editing, and I'm sure I can come up with two decent .bat script to launch the compiler and so on... More good ideas? Email them all to [e-mail] :-)

Re:What about the other half?

[haystor]

"They always think they know better, they have a massive attitude, and a huge superiority complex."

They?

Worst of all, they're 32% more likely...

[dpbsmith]

...to use ten animated web pages to display data that could have been presented better in ten lines of text using old-fashioned print media.

Re:What about the other half?

[plague3106]

No.

Ahh, a self important ass that believes his world view is the only correct one. Gotcha.

OK OK, I'll give notepad another chance for my code editing, and I'm sure I can come up with two decent .bat script to launch the compiler and so on... More good ideas? Email them all to [e-mail] :-)

Ya... because it's either VIM or notepad. Well have fun installing all the crap you think you need, I need to get back to doing actual work.

Re:Funny that

[Anonymous Coward]

Strangely, people born in 1980 are perfectly fine.

Re:Funny that

[IRGlover]

What about people, like me, born IN 1980. Should I maintain a chip on my shoulder or a smug sense of my own superiority? Should I install unauthorised software or not? AAARGH! The duality is tearing me apart...

Re:they need to protect their networks

[OnslaughtQ]

While the parent has been modded offtopic, I really think we need to give this comment more credit into its deeper meaning and how it relates to the article. I think the AC clearly intends for "Fuck the Chinese government!" to mean that there needs to be more penetration testing of networks. I'm not entirely sure what he meant by "Free Tibet!," however. I think it might mean to let our packets go, that they do not need to be mangled anymore. So, clearly the AC was not offtopic, probably just a bored author dying to make a metaphor between novels.

Re:they need to protect their networks

[SoonerSkeene]

I work for a certain convergent outsourcing company which converges with converging technologies to provide a ... okay I've taken this too far: I work for Convergys [convergys.com]. Every user on their network is an administrator. Every. Single. One. We have 1200 or so employees at my site alone, and we've got over 70 sites in the US.

They use group policy security to control the network, but you wouldn't believe how little thought goes into it. We had a new team form to provide support for a certain now-defunct pacific-coast city's municipal wifi. Because supporting an internet service sometimes requires tools such as ping/tracert/whatever -- they gave us a command prompt. But because they didn't want us having all kinds of access, what they really gave us was a shortcut to a batch file, which started with a choice prompt, allowing you to 'paste' so-to-speak, several commands, such as it would not let you have a blank prompt. It would always have a command, such as C:\>ping .

Well apparently no one told them that you can concatenate commands. We soon discovered we could just use the batch file to C:\>ping google.com & start cmd and have an unrestricted command prompt. And since we're all administrators, we can use MMC, and control every other part of our access.

I've since moved past my call-taking days, but I still work for them as an analyst. Of course they still won't let me provide any kind of network security device.

Re:Funny that

[PotatoFarmer]

But like I said, I'm out now. I'm going into physics and hopefully a job where I can actually be respected for what I know.

You're going to love being a research assistant.

Re:they need to protect their networks

[Nimey]

Fucking brilliant. The batch file idea requires that the password be in the .bat for all the world to see.

Re:Fuck their networks....

[Linux_ho]

But my paycheck depends on the companie's bottom line and as a production worker, I create that.

When you're not reading Slashdot, that is...

Re:they need to protect their networks

[Anonymous Coward]

especially the type who can't even pluralize properly.

younguns

[Sczi]

I have one of them there younguns on my network (receptionist), and she managed to install random crapware onto a terminal server on 3 separate occasions. I don't know how she does it, because it's locked down fairly tight, but I'm sure it's from myspace or whatever friendster clone the kids are using these days. Anyway, she's off the terminal server and running a local Linux now. Her manager wanted me to lock her down to where she couldn't do anything, but I felt bad for her, since reception isn't such a stellar job to begin with. Plus, she's kind of wild and not too discreet, so I sometimes get to see some boobies on her screen, heh. Good times, good times. I actually covered for her the first two times and just cleaned up her mess as quick as I could, but on the third one, her manager started getting popups saying such and such dll wouldn't load, and the dll supposedly existed in the receptionists home directory. I couldn't do much about that one..

Re:they need to protect their networks

[Anonymous Coward]

As are those that can't capitalize properly.

Re:they need to protect their networks

[Anonymous Coward]

I am in your network.

Sniffin ur packitz?