One-Third of Employees Violate Company IT Policies

BaCa writes with a link indicating that a survey of white collar US workers shows that something like a third of all employees break IT policies. Of those, almost a sixth actually used P2P technologies from their work PCs. Overall, the survey indicates workers aren't overly concerned about any kind of security: "The telephone survey found that 65% of white-collar professionals are either not very concerned or not concerned at all about their privacy when using a workplace computer. A surprising 63% are not very concerned or are not concerned at all about the security of their information while at work. Additionally, most employees have the misconception that these behaviors pose little to no risk to their companies."

Comments

"Used P2P technologies"

[amorsen]

"Of those, almost a sixth actually used P2P technologies from their work PCs."

Ooohh scary. I guess I'll be testing Fedora 8 later than expected, since using bittorrent for fetching it is now completely out of the question. Except that the company policy luckily does not forbid using "P2P technologies" where I work.

In soviet Amerika, policy violates you!

[fred fleenblat]

I get annoyed when a company violates MY policies.

* tracks my personal info, e.g. name, address, phone, email, shopping habits
* tries to limit my freedoms with invasive EULAs
* goes with cheap/easy IT choices that make them a prime target for bots, spam, and virus
* spreads FUD about competitors when the competitors are actually better
* tries to sell me a $2,000 product that I can do myself with a shell script
* tries to lock up my data in their proprietary format

If my installing linux or using an "unapproved" email client upsets someone in IT, that's because THEY are in the wrong not me. I'm not responsible for someone else's shortshighted policies, in fact I have a civic duty to violate them in the most flagrant and obvious way, to shed light on their stupidity.

Re:In soviet Amerika, policy violates you!

[iknownuttin]

If my installing linux or using an "unapproved" email client upsets someone in IT, that's because THEY are in the wrong not me. I'm not responsible for someone else's shortshighted policies, in fact I have a civic duty to violate them in the most flagrant and obvious way, to shed light on their stupidity.

You still have a job?

Re:What they don't say

[Rakishi]

Oh? Every dev at my company, thousands of them, has admin/root access to their machines and dev servers (su to be exact for the servers). There are very few problems and everything works quite nicely.

I guess my company not hiring $5/hour retards who dropped out of middle school to do their dev work may explain why there are so few problems.

Re:most employees...

[crabpeople]

"Two machines got Symantec anti-virus, and the other two got no anti-virus. They were told that since we don't have a copy for that machine, they'll just have to be extra careful"

Wow. An admin who cares more about licensing than actually protecting his network. I cant believe you actually wrote that, and it was modded up. MCSE's I guess...

"The whole company has since gone anti-virus free on the desktop, and problem reports and performance complaints have dropped way down"

In other news, new virus infections have increased elevenfold! Wow just wow. I cant tell if your trolling or not. How the hell are users going to tell if they have a virus without antivirus software? Magic? how the hell are you going to tell? Sure something obvious like a spam relay people are going to notice, but I see viruses being downloaded almost daily. Your experiment seems to imply that people care about their computers. Heck it implies that people are terrified of viruses and fucking up at work! They do not and are not. If a computer breaks, its in no way shape or form their problem or their fault. Just like if a car breaks its not your fault is it? Doesnt matter that you forgot to check the damn oil regularly, its the stupid cars fault! I would question if you have ever even worked in IT professionally with you making that statement.

users have no remorse.