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Don't Network Administrators Require Privacy?
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Recently their company has decided to move the IT staff out of their offices to make room for the Service Department. The move has placed the IT staff in cubicles that all face inward and lack, obviously, the ability to lock their doors at night. This is, to them, an obvious breach in security and privacy for what may be sensitive network information. Have any other Slashdot readers dealt with this sort of problem before? If so, what specific information was best suited to rectify these security concerns?
We ran into a similar issue at work. Our argument to keep our locked office was that since we have access to all the files on the network, under the HIPPA laws we're required to keep our workstations in a secured area like HR since confidential employee information could potentially be displayed on our screens. Don't know if it's true or not, but it let us keep our office.
All our IT group works in one room. Out front there's desks for our students to filter incomming people and deal with low level requests. There's also a big workbench down one side for systems we are fiddling with. Then in the back there's two cube partitions that hold the 4 staff. Two desks per partition, facing each other.
Know what? I actually like it. We have almost no staff meetings and part of the reason is we are all there and can talk to each other as needed. In fact usually we work with at least one headphone off so we can hear what's going on and stay informed. If someone is doing something that needs a lot of concentration, headphones go on and they get left alone.
It works really well, and means there's one central location people go to for computer support.
As for privacy, from what? Anything remotely private isn't in my desk, it's on my computer. Well, we all have root so we can all get in to each other's shit if we want. The room itself locks to keep others out at night, of course, but as for my coworkers, well if I can't trust them to not mess with my stuff, they probably shouldn't be employed anyhow. Any of us could, if we wanted, wreak massive havok having the root password to all servers, the enable password to all switches, etc.
Sounds like just so much whining to me.
Whether or not this is correct, you should organize a demonstration of how easy it is to:
Of course, invite everyone who is someone in the company to this demo, including people like the CEO and CFO. In short, people who care about data security.
And whatever you do, keep a paper trail, by sending emails to the power-that-be, keeping a paper copy, and be as courteous and professional as can be, while being firm that this situation is unnaceptable. Please remember that these are probably not technical people. But they will understand that some data should stay inside...
Just my 0.02 US$ here of course, IANAL, but I am a sysadmin.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I'll go ahead and give you a little.
I'm a network admin and not only am I part of the small percentage in our company that has an office, I'm part of an even smaller percentage that has a locking door. For me, it might not be completely necessary but it's desired for 3 reasons:
1) Work space - At any one time I might be working on 2 or 3 laptops and desktops while loading a server or configuring a router, etc. I need the space to set it all up. I have a counter top that runs along 2.5 walls of my office and a long table on the blank wall and it's all often occupied. My office doubles as my shop/lab.
2) Security - I have stacks of laptops, hard drives, routers, switches, etc. stored in my office and with our growth, more coming in every day. It's not that someone couldn't steal this stuff from elsewhere in our facilies, it's just that it's much easier to get to in my office. No unplugging, unbolting, etc. Just grab a stack of laptops and go. I've seen cabinets mentioned in other posts but I have too much stuff going on and if I was in one of our cubes I'd be lucky to fit 1 cabinet.
3) Peace and quiet - Between the useless chatter, relentless phone calls, streaming music and other noises, I can hardly hear myself think out there (cube world). Not to mention the drive through questions. Everybody and their little brother feels the need to stop by my office and ask a question on their way by. I don't mind it all the time. In fact I'm quite sociable, open and helpful but when I'm troubleshooting a tough problem or working on a project I just don't like to be disturbed. I generally deal with user issues in the morning and work on projects in the afternoon and evening. After lunch, when I close my door, everyone knows not to come knockin unless their problem is preventing them from completing their work.
That's my 47 cents.
MG
Do NOT think that those locks are security in anything but name. They exist solely to satisfy insurance companies that you "lock" things up.
Actually, that's not why those cheap locks exist. They are there so that people don't have to put up "don't open this even if you're just looking for a stapler" notices all over the place.
The common bathroom lock is a good example. It's easily bypassed because it's not there to seriously defend the bathroom. It's there as a "this is off-limits for the time being" notice.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
Kinda right, kinda wrong. if the IT department deals with any of the financial data the boss will get his arse reamed hard the second a Sarbanes Oxley audit is performed.
We had this problem here until the director of operations was reamed up one side down the other and then almost publically flogged when we missed an audit and he ignored all the noted problems on the monthly internal audits.
Now all key IT people not only are in a cubicle land in an office with limited keycard access, but we have 3m privacy filters on all our screens. and al lservers were put in a server room with even more limited access. Before then they had them pretty much in the open where anyone could gain physical access of the servers and the IT department easily.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've never seen an office that isn't completely open plan. I work on sensitive government projects (RESTRICTED in the Official Secrets Act sense) and my desk is accessible to anyone who gets in through the front doors. (2 of, plus building security and office reception, but still)
So the network admins have been moved out of their offices? Cry me a river, and welcome to the 21st century along with the rest of us.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I am a locksmith. I work with file cabinets and cube drawers all the time. Those locks you link to are specifically for one particular brand of medium-security, fire-rated, burglary-safe type file cabinets, not cubicle furniture. The crap-ass locks on cubicle drawers and cabinets, even the more expensive Steelcase stuff, simply cannot be improved. They're cheap chinese junk of one-off designs that don't lend themselves to retrofitting anything decent. Furthermore, a better lock doesn't do squat for security when your drawers and cabinets are made of cheap sheetmetal and particle board. If someone were stupid enough to install (say) an expensive MAS Hamilton electronic safe lock on a standard steelcase desk drawer, I would almost pay money for the chance to show him how his costly upgrade could be bypassed with a flat blade screwdriver.
Cube furniture isn't secure. Expensive locks ain't the answer.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I haven't had an office in 10 years! Not since getting a high paying job for one of the Fortune 100. Nothing but cubicles for as far as the eye can see! Office space is reserved on the outer perimeter where the windows are. Anyone with an office is a manager of at least 100 people. If they have a corner office then they have those managers reporting to them and they are ultimately responsible for several hundred employees. Were it not for the skylights there would be no sunlight in the cubical farm. The good thing is conference rooms are on the outer wall as well so you can kinda stare out the window during boring meetings.
IT people are in cubicles and have been for at least 20 years. The servers are locked up in secured environmentally controlled data centers. You wouldn't want to work there, it sucks typing when your hands are freezing. The noise of the cooling fans and air conditioning is pretty darn loud too.
Due to Sarbanes/Oxley the customer data is secured to such a ridiculous degree that the IT staff doesn't have access to production data anymore! Yeah, that's right, the IT staff cannot see production data! When there is a problem we have to request a special temporary user name that expires in like 8 eight hours. That id is issued to you and the password is reset. You then use that account to examine the production system. Everything that account sees or does is logged extensively. When you are done, you give the account back and it's reset. If you forget, it will expire soon enough. Those with access to issue the accounts and reset them are at the highest levels of security and are located in our mainframe operations center where they are under constant surveillance including by closed circuit digital cameras. These guys have to go through several card access points to reach the data center. They are not even in cubicles but what looks like a college lecture hall of desks on stepped risers with projection screens on the main wall. Looks like a NASA control center. This helps a lot in major outages to have all the experts in the same room.
The call center staff obviously has access to production client data because they need to. But that doesn't mean they aren't being watched all the time. Every read is logged and if it's found that they should not be reading that customers data at that time, they will be caught. Random audits are performed constantly. We have a special investigations team which is constantly on the lookout for potential fraudsters, etc.
Security performs periodic physical security audits. i.e. going around looking for people who keep their ID/Passwords under their keyboards or on post-it notes; leaving their desks unlocked, leaving confidential information out in the open, etc. This happens at night after most people go home.
Cell phones with cameras and USB devices are forbidden in some places. The call center computers USB ports have been filled with an insulating epoxy from a hot glue gun. Of course that doesn't stop someone from writing down notes and sticking it in their pants. I mean if Sandy Berger can enter the national archives and stuff top secret documents down his pants and walk right out then so can a call center employee who makes less then $15 / hour. What the hot glue in the USB / Firewire slot does is stop someone from moving gigabytes of data out the door in one move. There are also no CD/DVD burners in the call center for the same reason.
Arguing security isn't a good thing, it will just lead to a security crackdown that isn't going to stop someone whose diligent and determined. It will just inconvenience you further... Take a look at those 4 Chinese Spies they just caught in California! They worked for defense contractors and gave away military secrets to the Chinese. I mean if we can't stop our military secrets from walking how can we stop everyday business data theft and industrial or corporate espionage?