Slashdot Mirror
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."
I'm guessing a more accurate headline would be: One-Third of Employees Admit to Violating Company IT Policies
The rest just didn't let on - because there is no way the number is that low. Or they didn't outright lie, they just didn't even know they had violated company policies.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Of those, almost a sixth actually used P2P technologies from their work PCs.
In other news, one sixth of one third of all IT admins are stupid enough to not block P2P traffic on their networks.
There are a lot of really stupid IT policies out there that, in the name of security, in fact merely hinder getting work done. I am not talking about P2P. Giving a developer a workstation with a user account with no administrator privileges on Windows is among them.
Insert self-referential sig here.
...there's a very relaxed IT policy.
Browse whenever you want, take whatever software you want home, check your email if you want, everyone's their own local admin, no audits.
However, if you get caught with illegal software, miss a deadline because of blatant time-wasting, then you get fired (for continuous abuse). People work not because of policy, but because they want to do well and enjoy what they're doing.
I happen to also work in one of the biggest names in IT too....not some small company. The policy works very well, as is evident from the company's success and the fact people rarely leave. That and brain-implants, anyhow.
throw new NoSignatureException();
I've actually tried this little social experiment.
I run the network for my mother's company for free, so I'm allowed whatever liberties I'd like in deciding policy instead of having it dictated by a boss. They've got over 20 machines, and they aren't formally assigned, so if one goes down it's not the end of the world, the employee can use one at another desk for awhile. Usually they use the same one every day though.
The experiment was this:
Four new employees. Four new Windows XP Professional PCs. All use Firefox for a browser and Thunderbird for e-mail, along with the proprietary manufacturing/sales app that they run their business with. 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 about what documents they open, and how they use their e-mail. (We really were out of licenses/subscriptions, which is how this started)
After three months, both of the AV-free PCs were completely fine, and one of the machines that had the anti-virus was running a botnet spammer (the outgoing spam was being blocked by the firewall). The most amazing bit though, was that the fear of not having anti-virus protection had stopped users of those two machines from doing most of the non-viral bad stuff that average windows users do. There was no proliferation of toolbars, no weatherbug.... They didn't even have realPlayer.
It's amazing what a false sense of security people get from running anti-virus software. They don't even realize that they still have to be careful because 0-day threats aren't in the latest virus definitions yet. They think they can do whatever they want, because they are protected.
The whole company has since gone anti-virus free on the desktop, and problem reports and performance complaints have dropped way down. Education and a healthy dose of respect for the evils of the world work better than any anti-virus on the market. And the cost savings are nice too.
(There is still some basic protection in place. All internet access is through a secured web proxy. Non-http traffic isn't allowed. Intrusion detection on the firewall, etc... And the servers are still scanned, AVG on the windows servers, chkrootkit on the linux servers.)