Slashdot Mirror
Young Employees Pose Increasing Risk to Networks
buzzardsbay writes "Baseline is reporting on an upcoming survey from Symantec and Applied Research-West that confirms many suspicions about the generation gap in the workplace, namely that younger workers will use your corporate network to run most any device, technology or social networking software they can get their hands on. Dubbed "Millenials," these workers born after 1980 are nearly twice as likely to use cell phones and PDAs at work, and half admit to installing unauthorized software on their employer's computers. On the upside, the Millenials are more security aware than their older co-workers."
isn't it the company's responsibility to control their network?
- Do it but don't admit it
- Or don't it but are way less productive than their peers
I don't know how it is for the rest of the slashdot crowd but almost everywhere I've worked it's impossible to be (decently) productive using only authorized software.
The sad thing is not a matter of cost, but a matter of paperwork. Something as basic as winrar (no, let's not go into why would I want to use winanything) is impossible to get by the official channels.
They are more likely to play on your lawn. Make sure you yell at them from your front window. Damn kids.
only 25% of pre-1980 employees install rogue software on corporate PCs compared to 46% post 1980. If that happened in the bank I worked for there would be hell to pay!
They pose a greater risk because of unauthorized software, yet they are more security aware. Am I missing something that would otherwise make this sensical?
Most people born after 1980 are treated like shit in the IT industry. You are taken on for pitiful wages with vague promises of future riches, squeezed for every bit of knowledge you have, then booted out when the project(s) you are working on are finished. So it is hardly surprising that people treated so shabbily don't have a particular commitment to their workplace.
Most of the highly technical and well paid jobs (system admins and the like) seem to be already taken by well established old folk, and nobody is really interested in training anybody for when they retire. Managers take IT systems completely for granted, consider IT professionals to be lowly peons, and are in for a nasty shock when the handful of people keeping their systems running leave.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
disclaimer: I am a "millenial", whatever the hell that means ;)
From the second slide: It's irritatingly true that many millenials can't pry themselves from their damn phones. Nobody should allow their phones to ring in class or during a date -- unless they're dope dealers, pimps, doctors, or on-call IT staff. That's why I prefer the company of mature women: they say a lot less, but what they say actually counts!
From the fourth slide: Not at all surprised to see that 59 % of "millenial" workers think they can install whatever they want, given that more of them are spoiled gimme-gimmes...but to be fair, I'll bet that older people are far more adept at trashing their home computers than millenials are at trashing any computer. How many times have you all had to reinstall your grandpappy's mangled, crapware-infested OS(which shall remain nameless...*wink*)?
From the tenth slide: how does better access to technology improve work/life balance? Does it enable workaholics to work from home during their offtime? Does it enable employees to feel "home" while fuckin' off on Myspace at work? I doubt that a significant percentage of those sampled were full-time telecommuters who truly felt a better work-life balance(read: they weren't "encouraged" to put in mass overtime just because they worked from home).
Pffft.
No, I'm not making this up. This really happened one place I worked.
My blog
Looks like the title is overblown. The younger works do slightly more risky things than the older workers. However, the older workers (Gen X in this case) still do all the same things, just a little less often. None of the numbers suggest a big change in risk. A lot of the risk factors being described just go from numbers like 47% to 51%. Hardly anything dramatic.
If you want to secure your network, you need to address all the risks that are out there. Adding a little more risky behavior does not really make for any real changes is the risks to the network. Networks are always at risk from the weakest link. A 60 year old employee who happens to do something risky is just as bad for the network as a 20 year old.
On one side letting some random person install any old IRC client is just asking for the office machine to be owned eventually. On the other hand, I hate the idea of being a no good outlaw just because I want to use vim instead of notepad for text editing.
I read the internet for the articles.
First off: Worst article ever. Not just one paragraph per page...1 statistic per page? Jesus. Content to page ratio is like .001:11. And what content there is is vapid and uninteresting.
If you're an admin tasked with security, you have to assume all users are evil, so the question should be more along the lines of, "What is the problem with your process that you are allowing these users to install unapproved software?" Symantec obviously has a big stake in convincing people that they need better security (assuming that this will drive business for their crappy products), but the simple truth is that these sorts of problems shouldn't BE problems in an adequately secured network...Even your basic windows AD setup on XP is capable of restricting software installs and such.
If you're a big believer in allowing users to install whatever crap that they think they need to do their jobs, then you'll need to invest in some solid networking gear because you're inevitably going to have more problems. Otherwise, just lock it down, set up an approval process, and be prepared to deal with a zillion complaints from people who think they're experts because they did their own myspace page.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
give their passwords on the phone to whoever asks. I've seen it happen. Security is an issue that effects us all. Shouldn't single out the young people on this one.
They're also less likely to call IT with problems like "I'm trying to make an Internet on my desktop but I can't get the file to program."
I don't care why you're posting AC
This just in... young people are more likely to use iPods and PDAs than old people. Film at 11.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
those who manage the networks and PCs get ticked off and impose what seem like draconian rules about installing software and locking people down. All that extra cruft takes its toll on network performance and consumes resources.
If you need a piece of software, yes, we will install it for you. You do not need the Gmail notifier constantly popping up and telling you you have new mail or checking for updates. Nor do you need to have Quicktime continually checking for updates. You most certainly do not need any kind of P2P software installed.
While it's nice these "new" people are more comfortable with technology, the downside is the proverbial, "Just enough knowledge to be dangerous".
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
What exactly does "unauthorized software" mean?
My company doesn't give me administrator privilages, but has IE 5.5 installed. They haven't told me exactly what I can or can't do with my computer (except "you can browse the web in your down-time, but don't look at porn"), but I don't think the people that immediately oversee me know enough about computers to understand installing programs and stuff (really, it's pretty amazing--they don't even know that IE 5.5 is different at all from whatever they use at home).
The computer won't let my upgrade IE, so I installed Opera and Firefox. Is this "unauthorized software"?
Now, let's go a step more complicated.
They said I can browse the web in my downtime, right. So I figured I can also download and view MIT physics lectures (yes, Walter Lewin). My computer doesn't have proper codecs to view these videos. So I had to install codecs, but the computer is very resistant to that--it took a lot of trial and error to find a codec that would install and also play the videos.
Did the larger amount of work to avoid the problems associated with a lack of administrator privileges make this "unauthorized"?
I've also tweaked the registry (this is Windows 2000) because there were several programs starting with the computer that I have no use for. "Unauthorized"?
"...namely that younger workers will use your corporate network to run most any device, technology or social networking software they can get their hands on. Dubbed "Millenials," these workers born after 1980 are nearly twice as likely to use cell phones and PDAs at work, and half admit to installing unauthorized software on their employer's computers. On the upside, the Millenials are more security aware than their older co-workers."
Um, no. That they install unverified social software on corporate machines and socialize at work means they are not more security aware. Social access is the number one security breach method.
I'm in my mid-20's so I think I would fit into this "generation" gap and want to comment on this. And no, I'm not at work presently to post this, in case the inescapable irony strikes some readers.
I know some of my peers feel that simply having access to the Internet means they can use it during the workday either to take a break during the work period, not work at all or use the Internet on breaks. My friends don't do this but I have had co-workers who have and were generally disciplined and eventually fired for not doing their assigned work.
Personally, I feel that I have an obligation to my employer: 1) to do the tasks I am assigned and 2) to protect the information on their networks. I avoid using the Net at work for non-work tasks and social networks for these reasons.
This article appears to be taking a stupid slant on the statistics that have been gathered. It keeps harping about the "Millenials" (people born after 1980) when really it should say "people in their 20s". My issue is that 20 years from now, the Millenials will be in their 40s, but it will still be the people in their 20s who are the greater risk. The Millenials are not a generation of risk takers, they are currently at the risk taking age.
When I was in my 20s, I was much more risk prone than I am now (in my 40s). Back then I considered it my *right* to be able to install whatever I wanted on a computer, and would be unconditionally annoyed and offended if it was not allowed. Today I am more aware that there are reasons for most restrictions. Yes, some restrictions don't make sense, but a very many do.
This type of thinking was in more aspects of life than just computers. Back in my 20s, I would say that I drove less cautiously than I do today. I drank more heavily, ate poorly, resented having to wear a bike helmet, jay-walked more often, the list goes on. These are all behaviours that I, and most people, grow out of.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
I'll remember this article next time that me, born in 1982 has to go round removing all the shareware games like Kyodai that all the middle age helpdesk women have decided to install on their computers because the 40 yr old manager we have thinks they should be free of security restrictions even if it causes such problems and creates security risks for the network.
Or when I'm dealing with silly amounts of calls because one 40+ yr old colleague is stood outside on their mobile phone arranging with their wife who is doing the cooking and the other is browsing holiday sites deciding where to go on holiday next.
Articles like this are stupid, they're a generalisation and where I work it couldn't be further from the truth. 3 out of 4 of our 1980s+ born workers and 1 out of 12 of our pre 1980s born workers make up our best 4 workers, that's completely out of line with the articles findings and whilst I realise you always get anomalies from statistical samples you should also not try and dress up this kind of bullshit as general fact.
In fact look at TFA, as hard as that is when it insists on jumping to the next stat before you've had chance to check the page properly I don't notice any information how solid a test base they used.
For all I know this could be put together by some disgruntled middle aged worker who actually sucks bad at his job but like many would rather blame someone else and so decided to blame the younger generation for taking his work.
Anyone know how reasonable a test base was used for this study? As it stands I could equally put together a made up study claiming older people are more likely to steal from the work place and pass it off as being fact.
...to use ten animated web pages to display data that could have been presented better in ten lines of text using old-fashioned print media.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I'm not a 'milleniumial', I was born in the first half of the 20th century. When I work for a company, they want two things: productivity and security. Security means that I'm not going to harm the company physical property and co-workers. Productivity means that I produce more of what they sell than it costs them to pay me.
Two paracitical factors inhibit this arrangement: the IT department and the human resources (legal) department. The cousin ITs believe that they can build a framework according to their training that will make us all be more productive. The HR believe the same with a different framework. But since neither of them are engaged in the primary productive activity that makes the enterprise profitable, the inevitably screw it up. In a million little and not so little ways. So we fight back.
Case in point, in the USA the politicians and insurance companies have fucked-up the health care industry to the point where most employers will not hire people in order to avoid providing health insurance. They hire people on 'contracts' creating a class of permanent temporary workers. This is especially common in the electronics industry. We work some place for six months, then work another place for six months, etc... If we get sick, we point a gun at the head of some supermarket manager and have him give us the cash in the safe. It's the new American way, it will happen to you, so don't judge me for what I must do. I don't want to hurt anyone.
Anyway, we bring our own tools to new jobs. Our software programs that we customize and modify that will maximize our productivity. Tools like text editors, spreadsheet macros, graphics and CAD design programs. I'm going to spend forty hours learning CADbozoCAD when most of the industry uses BozoCAD, just because your company got it a 10% discount? Fuck that!
I'm going to put BozoCAD my computer that I work with. I'm going to create works and convert the results into standard formats. I'm going to ignore as much as possible any previous work done in any non-industry standard format. Is there a risk to your company network and even maybe the BSA Microsoft thugs? Possibly, but...I...don't...give...a...fuck. If you hire us and provide health insurance like all companies do in the rest of the civilized world, then I ( and the millions like me in this situation) would be more sensitive to these concerns. It's one of the unforseen issues that results from using perma-temps as your workforce.
Most production managers realize this and accept it. Most cousin ITs and dumb-as-shit Human Resources people don't. Because it doesn't fit into the frameworks that they built. But my paycheck depends on the companie's bottom line and as a production worker, I create that.
So it is a constant three-way battle between the cousin ITs (the information technology department of the company who maintain the company network),the perma-temps, and the HR lawyers. They ALWAYs believe that by firing us, they maintain control and security. But they don't provide the product that keeps the company in business. Their departments are not profit centers for the company.
So the game just goes around and around. This is why I have come to hate the IT department in any company. HR people are too stupid to be concerned with, and lawyers aren't human so don't waste emotional cycles on them.
I agree with your position. In an electronics production lab or factory floor it is insane to be tied to the same network as the rest of the company. And it is unreasonable to expect us to follow the same rules for the omnipresent company network.
Each department or workgroup needs to have a private network so people can load their own WinAmp, personal text editors and productivity-enhancing macros, MP3s, and oscilloscope controllers without having to interact with the rest of the company network.
But I've found that it is nearly impossible to convince anyone in any IT department of this reality. So it goes.
I will step to put a bit of perspective on this flamefest and tell you something I heard somewhere (unfortunately I can not site but someone here will certainly correct me). The paraphrased quote went something like this:
"The difference between Americans and British is that Americans believe their country is wonderful and is the best one in the world while the reality is that it is terrible. On the other hand, Britons are always bitching about their country without realizing their life is actually pretty good".
I can tell you from my experience in the UK (I've lived in the UK for about 4 years, coming form Mexico) is that you people over here have it really easy. Shit, people can just stop working and the government will pay them money. "spare some change mate?" you see people selling the "big issue" and then they go to cash their check to get beer. That is being poor in this country. Let me tell you, you do not know what the fuck you are talking about.
For people in the UK life is really easy right now. It is, really. You have a hell lot of things which you take for granted. You whine that you can not get a free dentist. Oh shit, but you do not see that in other countries and in other times (even in your country) there is no free NHS even for a freaking Nurse.
So as other people already said, stop whining and go back to fucking work you lazy ass.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
"People in my country have less these days, yet we are told the young are spoilt."
I see why you're having such a hard time understanding this.
You seem to think that "spoilt" = having stuff. If you'd bothered to ask, I suspect many of the people who think you're spoiled think that not because of the amount of stuff you have, but because of the sense of entitlement that is practically dripping off of your posts on the subject.
You see, it's not about the stuff, it's about the attitude that you think you deserve something you haven't yet earned. If your posts are any indication, that may be why people around you think you're spoiled.
he chose to blame insurance blah blah... but the fact of the matter is temp agencies ARE becoming massive massive employers for white collar jobs. the early temp agencies were for blue collar jobs, but now it's spread to white collar jobs and, yeah the company usually doesn't hire you because replacing you with another temp instead of hiring you is 'cheaper.'
I have heard of many many places that now use temp agencies almost exclusively. The reason why white collar jobs are going to temp agencies, is because they can staff the positions like lightning and have them ready to be restaffed when the people have been on contract too long, and you get a really good idea of where to put certain people because of the tests the temp agency runs... I know some of this stuff can be done with a normal HR department, but it boils down to cost, temp agencies get the worker to do the same job for less pay, even when the temp agency takes a certain cut of that pay.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
It's not just cost. It's skill.
You can't actually hire someone straight out because once you're do, you're basically stuck with them and the lies they put on their resume to get the job.
Contractors who are any good get hired permanent once a company realizes it. And by "good" I don't just mean good technically - gods know there are plenty of assholes who can code pretty well. It's personality and compatibility with other human beings. Note that the great-grandparent ranter who started this fails in those regards. HR (who are also shockingly just trying to make a living) are too stupid to even respect? Buh-bye.
I have one of them there younguns on my network (receptionist), and she managed to install random crapware onto a terminal server on 3 separate occasions. I don't know how she does it, because it's locked down fairly tight, but I'm sure it's from myspace or whatever friendster clone the kids are using these days. Anyway, she's off the terminal server and running a local Linux now. Her manager wanted me to lock her down to where she couldn't do anything, but I felt bad for her, since reception isn't such a stellar job to begin with. Plus, she's kind of wild and not too discreet, so I sometimes get to see some boobies on her screen, heh. Good times, good times. I actually covered for her the first two times and just cleaned up her mess as quick as I could, but on the third one, her manager started getting popups saying such and such dll wouldn't load, and the dll supposedly existed in the receptionists home directory. I couldn't do much about that one..
I was going to comment on this thread, but you hit the nail on the head. I work for the "evil" fortune 500 large corporation. Same situation. We get a lot of resumes, a few look like they might be a match technically, and then even fewer have the personality to work in a corporate environment. We almost exclusively do try-to-buy contracts here for that reason, usually 6 mos to a year before someone will get hired on full-time. It's a two way street also, sometimes after 6 mos they want to run screaming from here. We've gotten to the point where we are usually willing to sacrifice technical expertise for personality. We can overcome just about any technical obstacle, however the rogue @ssh0le programmer that can't and won't work well with others is virus to the organization, especially considering it takes an act of congress to fire anyone anymore.
Maybe... just maybe... you have a point. But if so, the boomer generation should emphatically NOT be saying Gen X and Millenials are lazy self-entitled pansies. Instead Boomers should be saying - We're sorry, we collected more intergenerational economic rents than we should have, and kept doing it for too long. We are the arrogant and greedy generation. Now that we are "rich" on our children, grand children, and great-grand-children's backs, how can we transfer some of that wealth back to later generations and ease your transition into economic sustainability?
Ok, I am 26 and fit into this category.
I am a unix (solaris, aix, linux) systems administrator and my job is being the darth vader of unix land essentially. That being said, yes, I installed unauthorized software on my windows workstation.
The software? Firefox, putty, cygwin, gvim, winscp.
Un-authorized? Sort of, but only if I can't prove it doesn't apply to my job. If your policy doesn't allow people to install tools they know to be useful to their job, your policy is wrong. Now since I am an admin of sorts, i can understand the iron fist reasoning for tracking what is installed and where. But the same reason I need putty is the same reason I as an admin can't sit there and easily judge if user xyz really needs app foo.
A chat client? Yeah, good luck convincing me on that, but installing emacs or gvim to edit files? As long as you ask beforehand why not? Then I know, and more importantly I know who installed app xyz. Isn't IT supposed to be a cooperative venture and not adversarial?
I can't imagine I am alone being my age and with this attitude here. But whatever, flame away.
He's right - you're an ass. If I saw my parents' generation reap the benefits of free education and dentistry, then stop paying for it when they got old, I'd be pissed too. It's not entitlement to expect the same deal the previous generation got. If it is, then the behavior of the boomers is just rapacious, which makes entitlement downright civilized.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
mod parent up. it's not a troll it's the clearest explanation of the problem with the OP in the thread.
Things change. I don't treat my youngest son exactly the same, nor provide for him exactly the same, as I did his older brothers. Partly because he's different, partly because our environment is different, partly because *I'm* different.
I'm guessing the OP is old enough to vote. Part of the problem then?
Damburger- as to respect. If you require every interaction to prove deserving of respect then you'll forever wander a lost zone where nothing is real. You sense this and you call it cynicism. It is not. It's just simple misanthropy.