131–140 of 202 posts
This is common at many semiconductor companies. Not only is it a ban at one specific semiconductor oem I know of, the usb-ports are disabled and the usb-ports on new issue computers are epoxied to prevent trying to use them. Semiconductor technology is one of the areas of global-technological competition which surely benefit from secrecy. For example, several years ago one of the c-level executives at this specific O…
* https://www.pcmag.com/news/361098/ibm-employees-cant-use-rem...
... which is in turn sourced from an article in The Register.
* https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/10/ibm_bans_all_remova...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What sort of Fortune x00 company doesn't use a corporate VPN?
Google: https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub43231
Wouldn't that cause a lot of break-ins?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not wrong on their poor employee experience, but there's very little theater involved - there's good reason to protect their IP. Any firm that invests multi-millions in original design will want to protect their property from theft. Semiconductors were mentioned, but also think about someone like Pixar.
The thing is, what's stopping employees from uploading files to a server? The physical devices are a fraction of a fraction of IP theft. Hence the term "theatre".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you connect a keyboard or mouse?
To be fair, they are not completely locked down like I may have made it sound. The usb port restriction is absolutely true for laptops, but colo desktops probably do not have this restriction, or just a more lax restriction. Also, its not true for all laptops of the company, but usb access does require explicit permissions and a new-issue laptop, so they do have a list of people who have riskier laptops, and may need…