Slashdot Mirror
Do IT Pros Abuse Their Power?
An anonymous reader writes "I have noticed that many airports and hospitals I've visited have some kind of internet usage policy in place. Some use software similar to Websense, which effectively blocks sites based on blacklisting them by category. A commonly used blacklist prevents users from accessing 'forums or discussion boards,' yet I find that often these networks allow users to access sites like Fark, Slashdot, Digg and other message boards that appeal to the technical culture one might find in the IT world. In your experience, do IT administrators abuse their supervisory powers? Has there ever been a backlash from users or management for doing so?"
A BOFH might find it more fun to manipulate data from certain websites, rather than block sites.
;).
e.g. the BOFH substitutes some images, and/or inserts a rather loud audioclip.
Go figure out the details yourself.
Even if you use SSL, the BOFH probably controls what CA certs are installed in your browser
you can blame the fact that the websense ceo is the same guy who was ceo of Mcafee during the time when Mcafee was known to be a piece of shit software that wasn't complete or accurate. Is it any more surprising that he's equally badly mismanaging websense, and is selling to the same crowd with both basically?
The issue is a man named gene hodges , the guy is a horrible ceo (and cause for many tech issues relying on anything he is a part of) .
Do you allow DNS on your network? OpenVPN-over-UDP-over-IP-over-DNS isn't lightning fast but it does the job most of the time. It's a neat way to (ab)use commercial WiFi hotspots too. You can't stop a determined power user except maybe with a whitelist of a small set of whitelisted remote hosts.
In my experience the IT dept generally has rules for other people and rules for themselves. They "know what they are doing" while everybody else "can't be trusted". Their login for general usage is full administrator and bypasses websense, while I am barred from sites "listed as general business" (only sites pre-approved by IT are allowed, which they make very clear they do not do because they don't want people asking them all the time). Our email attachment limits are 2mb ("it takes up space on the server") and FTP is outright barred - even though one time it was the only way for a client to send me files IT wouldn't do it, so I went home and put it onto a USB stick.
They install whatever they like, including such productivity tools as BBC news sports tickers. Despite pretty much being able to do everything on their work-paid cell phone, not having to multi-task or whatever they have brand-new machines. When another member of staff requires a new PC, they get an IT staff's PC and IT get a new PC. Despite the general staff doing work where screen real estate is highly productive, their monitors are 15" and 17" while IT and managers have 19" (although they were quite savvy and gave the partners 21"; monitors are the new bigger desk and chair). In my job where we do quite a lot of printing, speed and quality are important, IT also have the best printer - yet it took a week for them to notice when I unplugged it one Friday night.
IT is all about convenience for IT. All our productivity stuff, which at any given moment 99% of staff is running at any given moment, is quite server intensive. They're all on the same server, while low-intensity stuff rarely used has three idle servers all to itself. I spend a significant portion of my time waiting for the server to respond. It's quite embarrassing when a client turns up asking for a simple copy of a report in a hurry and it takes me 10 minutes, they think I must have forgotten so they ask reception to call up and remind me they're late for their meeting. I pointed out once that the servers could be rebalanced to distribute the load but was told "that would be too much hassle".
All the procedures are laughable. Despite almost completely phasing paper filing out, all staff's basic logins can delete data files and all the backups are kept on a shelf on site. I could obliterate the lot in one minute of madness (probably induced by dealing with IT). It would take me longer to copy it all to a couple of USB sticks, but nobody would notice until they got the blackmail letters or it was on the news.
But let's not get all confused and think I'm bashing IT here. I can say pretty much the same thing about every single department. Like how the time it takes me to obtain new propellant pencil leads costs the firm 16x the price of the leads. If I kept one carton for work then stole the rest of the box it would be cheaper for the firm than following procedure.
As regards other managers, few have the slightest clue about IT. Those that do just work it to their advantage - they get preferential treatment so it makes them look good.