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When Employees Use Software That IT Hasn’t Approved

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Re: When Employees Use Software That IT Hasn’t Approved

#171

Post by pickle-wizard »

geggam wrote: post #106
maxxxxx wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that after a recent remodel the router got moved and we don’t know where it is. It still works but nobody knows the exact location. It may be in the ceiling or the floor.

LOL reminds me of a very old bash.org http://www.bash.org/?5273

That reminds me about the story of a University that an old DEC VAX that got walled up during a remodel. Machine kept running and no one notice. A decade later another remodel came along and they tore down the wall to find the machine just happily running.

Re: When Employees Use Software That IT Hasn’t Approved

#172

Post by oxfordmale »

rb808 wrote: post #164
maxxxxx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound exactly like every other IT guy who doesn’t understand what we are working on. We then explain everything to them and usually they disappear and are never heard of again. That is, until the next guy shows up a year later and the cycle repeats.

I was a dev in the 90s and the start of the 2000s and always had admin rights. I dont need it any more. If you really had an edge case that requires admin rights I'm surprised. If you really need SQL server on your workstation you should think about using a different database. If your company says you have to use SQL server and you have to have it on your workstation and you need to reinstall it regularly and you're…

Try running Visual Studio without admin rights and you will weep. Regarding other rights, I tried to onboard a new Dev without admin rights, however, after the 25th IT ticket (that take days to get done), I gave up.

Re: When Employees Use Software That IT Hasn’t Approved

#173

Post by Shorel »

maxxxxx wrote: post #61
rb808 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the reasons for admin rights are no longer valid. Its easy to change user environment variables and lots of applications can be installed as a user. Why would you need admin rights? Dropbox/googledrive is a huge security hole that is definitely blocked at most companies I work at.

This is about Windows desktop development. I need admin rights to install sql server, I need them to customize my machine so it’s similar to our target environment. I need to change user permissions all the time yo see how things behave under different conditions . There is a ton more I could walk you through and have done multiple times. Comments like yours come repeatedly from people who don’t know about the work w…

You should be able to do all that inside a VM.

In fact, several VMs.

Re: When Employees Use Software That IT Hasn’t Approved

#174

Post by alecco »

noir_lord wrote: post #76
lzol wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This resonates so much and seems to be a major trend in non-traditional tech companies. I've mostly worked in the financial industry and the executives' knowledge of technology is almost always horrible. As you said, a couple buzz words and very set opinions on the ways to do things. It's like they get pet projects in their head from reading an article in a magazine and get locked into it. I don't really have an issu…

> It's like they get pet projects in their head from reading an article in a magazine and get locked into it. It's not like that, it's often exactly that. I'm extremely fortunate in that while my boss sets the goals he never specifies how they should be achieved. That means I get to implement them as we need them. I'll never underestimate the value of smart management :).

>> It's like they get pet projects in their head from reading an article in a magazine and get locked into it.

>It's not like that, it's often exactly that.

And it usually is sold also from within from know-it-all primadonnas who want to climb the ladder. Or at least put something "spectacular" on their CV.

Re: When Employees Use Software That IT Hasn’t Approved

#175

Post by alecco »

alexhutcheson wrote: post #119
lzol wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This resonates so much and seems to be a major trend in non-traditional tech companies. I've mostly worked in the financial industry and the executives' knowledge of technology is almost always horrible. As you said, a couple buzz words and very set opinions on the ways to do things. It's like they get pet projects in their head from reading an article in a magazine and get locked into it. I don't really have an issu…

You'd probably really appreciate this comedy sketch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

While there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_vcy7I0zIM

Re: When Employees Use Software That IT Hasn’t Approved

#176

Post by alkonaut »

esoterica wrote: post #123
maxxxxx wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is about Windows desktop development. I need admin rights to install sql server, I need them to customize my machine so it’s similar to our target environment. I need to change user permissions all the time yo see how things behave under different conditions . There is a ton more I could walk you through and have done multiple times. Comments like yours come repeatedly from people who don’t know about the work w…

Sounds like you need a VM, not admin permissions.

Out of curiosity, what's the benefit of me doing bad things in a VM, instead of on my own machine - assuming the VM has full access to the same networks and data as the physical machine?

Unless the VM is somehow sandboxed it's just another box on the same network. So the same reasons for me not being admin on the physical machine (e.g. to not be able to download and run untrusted software because it might spread something on the network) should apply to the VM?

Re: When Employees Use Software That IT Hasn’t Approved

#177

Post by noir_lord »

alecco wrote: post #174
noir_lord wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like they get pet projects in their head from reading an article in a magazine and get locked into it. It's not like that, it's often exactly that. I'm extremely fortunate in that while my boss sets the goals he never specifies how they should be achieved. That means I get to implement them as we need them. I'll never underestimate the value of smart management :).

>> It's like they get pet projects in their head from reading an article in a magazine and get locked into it. >It's not like that, it's often exactly that. And it usually is sold also from within from know-it-all primadonnas who want to climb the ladder. Or at least put something "spectacular" on their CV.

Start a ground breaking project that will be amazing in 2 years.

Get promoted/leave for more money after 18mths.

2 years rolls around, everything is on fire but the guy with the matches is nowhere to be found.

Sounds very very familiar to me.

Re: When Employees Use Software That IT Hasn’t Approved

#178

Post by rifung »

repolfx wrote: post #124
ubermonkey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "dumb" here isn't even limited to "block Dropbox." Lots of my customers have blanket "block everything that could plausibly be used for file sharing" policies, and explicitly include services literally AIMED at corporate/B2B data exchange like Citrix's ShareFile. No, we don't have an internal FTP site. No, I won't set one up for you. We use Sharefile for distribution so we don't have to do that. Your IT blocks it…

The issue here seems more cultural than technical - it seems non-tech firms are vastly more paranoid about data sharing or leakage, despite usually having less valuable data. The amount of effort put into anti-exfiltration measures in finance is staggering compared to what existed at Google, and it kills productivity to an enormous degree. This seems to go hand in hand with a much greater obsession over IP. I've seen…

> My guess is that outside the tech industry, new ideas are relatively rare so even very simple ideas feel incredibly valuable.

Are they not rare even inside the tech industry?

Re: When Employees Use Software That IT Hasn’t Approved

#179

Post by davvolun »

yebyen wrote: post #138
davvolun wrote: post #132

> The CIO admitted that he had been approached and explained that he had informed the VP that IT already had a project with SAP to deliver what the VP needed. “Yes, but that won’t be ready for me to use for three years, and I need something today,” retorted the VP. The CIO was silent. Then the CEO asked the VP, “I’ve known you for ten years. You don’t seem like someone who would do something to harm the company. Why…

When a person says "we need this infrastructure project" and a project is commissioned, acknowledging the need, it is in my experience that unfortunately that person's job function is rarely placed on hold until the appropriate infrastructure has been made available. "Who cares about your pie-in-the-sky infrastructure project, my boss continues to measure our real performance with basic accounting, and is expecting t…

Of course that's the real question with the actual story in the actual article -- could they have implemented their security on the temporary infrastructure, or "good-enough" security, if the CIO knew about it?

In that story, is the blame on the VP for going ahead instead of getting dialogue started between CEO, VP and CIO? Is it on the CIO for just saying "no" instead of recognizing the need and the value? Is it on the CEO for failing to empower the VP and CIO to get that conversation started themselves?

And then, it's all well and good to worry about the bottom line first, until you're sitting in Equifax's shoes right.

Re: When Employees Use Software That IT Hasn’t Approved

#180

Post by Shivetya »

maxxxxx wrote: post #22

This is exactly extremely common. In my company there is this constant battle about the devs having admin rights on their machines. We need admin rights to do our job. We have had dozens of meetings explaining the situation but IT can’t come up with a solution so the devs go around security because they have no alternative if they want to finish their work . Same with Dropbox. They block it but we have suppliers who…

I have rarely found that they need admin rights on a day to day basis unless the tool is badly designed. I have one software delivery platform that requires full admin rights, it cannot write just to the user configuration!

However developers are very good at presenting it otherwise. Myself, I have run into issues where admin rights were needed, again always because of some poor installer. USB has been blocked as well and you can guess it, cannot do their work.

If they need admin rights all the time then put those particular machines on a protected network and not allow any other business work to occur there.

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