Slashdot Mirror
Managing Personal Electronics and Software In the Workplace
darien writes "Last night Symantec hosted a round-table discussion on the topic of consumer devices in the workplace. John Brigden, Symantec's senior VP for EMEA, pointed out that regardless of the policies businesses may lay down, individuals will always try to use their favorite gadgets and websites at work. Reminds me of when I worked in IT support: no matter how many times we told users they weren't allowed to install ICQ, or to connect their personal laptops to the corporate network, they insisted on doing it. Frequently they even asked us to help them do it."
The deal is that power tripping eye-tee martinets like yourself don't have hire and fire authority over the people who, you know, actually produce revenue. And that is as it should be.
IT will always be perceived as not serving the users interest since it's their job to provide a secure environment for the business. I've caught flak from day one in suggesting (succesfully) that DBAs and Developers didn't need to be Domain Admins or even local administrators of database servers of which 13 accounts were demoted. I caught flak when I suggested (successfully) strong password policies because people couldn't remember their password. The idea of letting every Tom, Dick, and Harry carry their personal laptop, thumb drive, pda, digital camera, iPod, cell phone, and wireless device around and connect into our network scares the $hit out of me. However, it's done because the senior management want it and don't see a problem with letting the guys in the trenches do it too. That being said, we don't support any personal device and will reset workstations to standard configurations if there's a problem. Luckily I'm not the person that supports that side of our network. Now, I've got to get back to downloading some podcasts to my iPod and syncing my calendar to my PDA while I'm waiting for this torrent to download on my laptop. It's good to be king.
Let me guess...you've never done desktop/server support at a company with more than 50 employees...right?