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Why IT Needs To Change for Gen Z
An anonymous reader writes "Staff will routinely be bringing their own devices to work in five years time, according to IT industry experts in the UK. Some companies might already allow a few iPhones and iPads, but CIOs and businesses are not only going to have to support a general influx of consumer kits — they're going to need to get a whole lot more relaxed in general. 'Big businesses are going to have to become more flexible about how IT is provisioned and managed — to enable a new generation of workers who use consumer technologies to communicate and be productive.'"
Staff will routinely be bringing their own devices to work in five years time, according to IT industry experts in the UK
Not where I work. Seriously, a *LOT* would have to change - like a move away from Windows networks, and that's not going to happen (sorry).
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I'm all for flexibility, but allowing unmanageable, unsecurable, unmonitorable devices like the iPhone (Android isn't much better, Phone 7 is better but still a big step back from WM6), that IT departments will somehow have to support every time they go wrong because they're "being used for work" is simply unworkable.
Bringing in non-managed hardware would be a security and support nightmare.
its one thing allowing a personal phone to hit your email server, ( since connecting to them often means you get some control, such as remote wipe and its no worse than offering webaccess to mail ) but its a far different issue letting people bring in their personal computers and expect to have them on the network.
No thanks.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well, while I'm in charge, they can bring them alright but they can't plug them or use them for anything work related. Won't there be a capacity for company issued devices in five years time?
I can see plenty of motive to force the workers to pay for their own work stations. You can simply fort up the servers and dump the headache of dealing with the &*^%$# programmers and their work stations. The data entry and administrative systems will still be locked down and controlled; but, all the others will have to fend for themselves.
It SHOULD come down to a simple business decision.
Is the advantage of adding those devices going to bring in more revenue than the extra effort and lost/compromised data is going to cost?
You are welcome to bring in your equipment, and use it. I put time, effort and expense into protecting the company assets from harm, including that which may come from your random equipment on our network, accessing our data. Yes, it takes more (time/effort/expense) to work with your random equipment than it would to just lock you out and threaten you with $punishment when you try to use stuff. That is ok. We have adapted.
Now when your stuff doesn't work, or you cant figure out how to do something with it... that is not my problem. You want your own gear -it's your gear.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Sorry, no matter what the generation, they should not be allowed to bring more attack vectors and security vulnerabilities in to the workplace.
They are not special snowflakes, and their personal devices are not necessary for productivity.
Businesses where mobile devices are useful and helpful should already have their infrastructures designed to handle it, so again Gen Z will make no difference.
It doesn't matter what generation anyone belongs to -- you'll do things the way the employer wants them done, or you won't be employed.
Now, are there some new technologies that are in common use in the consumer market that can be used effectively in the business environment? Probably, yes. And businesses will use them if it makes sense in their environment. But they won't use them because the pouty-faced punks with their newly-minted college degrees will throw a hissy-fit if the boss doesn't let them use their personal gadgets.
Business don't give a damn about their current employees, let alone potential future employees. You'll do as you're told if you want the money... and eating is such an addictive hobby.
Of course, young people just might start up their own businesses where everyone can stay focused on their iWhatevers all day, and if it's better than the old businesses than the young folks will win. I wouldn't put my money in their stock, though.
This will not happen in the US outside of some niche industries. Companies have too much legal exposure to take the risk some porn site malware is logging credit card info from all the customers the support people helped today.
I don't know the laws in the UK, but I suspect the same would apply.
Isolate their connectivity and treat them same way you handle connections from the internet. There's your security done. Get management approval that personal devices are the owner's problem. There's your support done.
On top of that, while everybody wants free wifi on their phone to waste away company time with, many balk at having to use something they paid for to do company work. Get enough complainers whining about why the company doesn't provide them what they need to do their job, and this whole "problem" mostly goes away.
Pretty much what I was thinking, yes.
Structures in companies, especially old and big companies, tend to be rigid. Changing them doesn't take years. It takes decades. GenY'ers will probably be used to carrying around their own computer-in-the-pocket (with their cellphones and pads that do by now easily double as computers), only to notice that these devices will not be allowed in corporation networks.
Bluntly, I don't think corporations will change. They will force YOU to change and adapt to their way of thinking and working.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
1st page: Kids want to use their computers/gadgets at work.
2nd page: These kids are clueless as to how IT really works and unemployable.
Most companies don't allow employee devices on the network for perfectly good reasons: to protect their IP and keep malware off their network. Everyone needs to stop worrying about mollycoddling these whining Gen-Z types and teach them to live in the real world.
Big businesses are going to have to become more flexible about how IT is provisioned and managed.
At my job (where I work in the IT department), if they need a device to do their job they're more than welcome, and even encouraged, to ask their director to fund it for them, in which case we'll be happy to provide them with a device we can control on our corporate network that allows them to do the job they were hired for. If they need it to do their job properly, we'll make sure they get it. No need to use their own personal (and potentially insecure and uncontrolled on our network) device they paid for themselves.
If they simply want to use their personal device because they want to or think it's cool and trendy, even though the device we provide them with does everything they need to perform the job we hired them to do.... too bad, sorry.
How are you doing that?
I spend a lot of time locking out systems because I cannot tell the difference between your legitimate connection and your machine being used by some cracker who was running a key logger on your home machine.
How do you handle it?
When I hear people saying "the next big thing" is people bringing in their own devices, my first reaction is that those people are assuming that using their personal devices will be "better", because they won't be locked-down the way managed IT hardware is. But I don't see how that's significantly different or better than just giving employees admin/root access to their own machines. At least with the latter, the devices aren't going back and forth between the (hopefully) firewalled/proxied corporate environment and the wild west of their home network.
What I think is more likely is that aside from limited access (email, maybe web browsing), the criteria for bringing their own devices in will be so onerous that they would rather have separate devices after all, rather than accept the new limitations on using their personal devices. After all, if it were cost-effective to support unmanaged systems, business IT would already be run that way.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
email+calendar, then IM and (video-)phone, and then documents and apps, from easier to more difficult/riskier.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Most of the comments before this one are a good example of the attitude of your average IT person toward this whole "personal equipment" thing.
Me, I work at a different company, where we decided to treat employees like responsible adults. We make sure people know how to secure their equipment and, if they want (and usually they do), we do it for them. If they want supported equipment, they choose between a wide selection of equipment choices (desktop/laptop, pc/mac/linux); if they want to be responsible for their own equipment, they can go and buy (and then expense) whatever equipment they want. I'm using an HTC Thunderbolt that I went to Verizon to purchase, then expensed, and then told the company to take over the contract (I could have simply expensed the contract on a monthly basis, but I'm lazy).
It's seemed to work pretty well for us, with no noticeable virus outbreaks. It supports that whole "our employees are our biggest asset" stuff that most companies just spout but never believe. In fact, it really comes down to that point -- IT people (much like HR people, BTW) mostly consider employees threat vectors, rather than colleagues. Here? It's the other way. And it seems to work pretty well.
Because "gen Z" is even thicker than "gen Y"?
Yes, companies are way too uptight about security. After all, it's not like there have been a lot of breakins or anything.
BTW what comes after "Gen Z"? Oh. Wait. The Rapture was yesterday. Nevermind.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
There aren't any "internal customers" because the concept of "customer" contains the element of "choice". If you don't like the service, you go to a different vendor. Internal departments do NOT have that option.
The implication being that those "new workers" will be worth the additional considerations. I'm sure you can find enough skilled workers who do not demand that you support their personal electronics.
As can be said with most fads and bubbles. The question isn't whether it will be happening but whether it will be a new requirement. Or will it happen and then fade as the security issues become evident?
Who cares about the software? It's the data that is important?
It's about the data, not the software.
Losing credit card info is a problem.
Getting Excel running on your phone is not an issue.
That depends upon the situation. Do you have read-only access via a secured web site?
What does he REALLY want to accomplish?
He is the CEO. But that just means that he is the CEO.
You can always find a new job.
It's easier to find a new job while you're still working.
Rather than AFTER you're fired because the company hits the papers for losing credit card info because of how you put a hole into your security for the CEO.
And you know that it will be YOU who is fired first and blamed for not keeping the place secure enough.
Seriously, these ones have no great insight - they're merely guessing. But what they're guessing is what will make a good story in 2011, not what will happen in years to come - when their guesses have been forgotten, superceeded, revived, altered, discredited and forgotten again. They have no great insight, or knowledge of what's to come and are really only useful for entertainment - such as posting equally ignorant replies to.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I think we've had this already when people/organizations went from mainframes to PCs. I think the people in charge of IT came up with similar arguments.
I am system administrator on my work laptop, but this is something most people will not be able to handle. If any kind of personal data is on these machines, they need to be secured far beyond what a normal user can do. In some industries, e.g. banking, using you own machine will still be completely out of the question. I predict that with the additional data breaches that are to be expected for the near future, most people will instead of on their own devices work on company devices that are even more locked down than today and that putting company data on personal devices without explicit permission will not only be reason for immediate termination but also a hefty contractual penalty in many workplaces.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The biggest entitlement problem with people and their own devices is they feel like they can use their work time for personal phone calls, tweeting, updating their facebook status, IMing, etc. The policy should be more like steal the company's time, your frickin' fired!
I work in IT security and I have been told in no uncertain terms what my job is by upper management.
They don't want to find themselves having to put something in the notes to the financials that our trade secrets have leaked, or that our competitors no our costs. They don't want to be embarrassed and have to apologize for leaking customer data. We are a manufacturing company we sell tools to professionals they expect us to be professions as well as look it. Management does not want to look like Sony.
I don't get off on saying "no" to people. I really don't but if I let a device be connected to the network I have to be able to know DLP policies are being followed. That means I probably have to have more control over your toys than you want me to have, or you have to settle less than great experiences. No you can't read e-mail on your IPhone APP, you can use Citrix to read it in Notes via your IPhone, and yes that probably is to painful to be worth while. We can't afford a large cached copy of your mail file to be sitting on a device you might lose which *may* be recoverable by its next possessor.
Your personal laptop, certainly if you let me put our full disk encryption software on it, and our endpoint policy enforcement tools and only IT Security gets root. You won't like that though, and I know it. Trouble is I don't have better solutions.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The business has to change? Love the name by the way. Generation Z is brilliant. Just add 2 more ZZ's. How about the generation ZZZ has to grow up? No young people of any generation were ever trusted with anything until they earned the trust. This generation is no different.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
they might have a place where I work. However they are not. See Apple has this one major problem. If the iOs device has an invalid password for a network it was previously connected to it will not prompt the user for the correct password, it will simply keep attempting to connect which in most shops locks out the account. This has caused a great amount of grief with the network people where they now simply tell people - no support. Please buy an Android device or Blackberry to get your mail and/or access the network. Supposedly Apple has a fix scheduled for 4q 2012.
So while gen Z might want their fad devices and similar in the work place it will require manufactures to have their heads somewhere else other than up their own butts. It will also require laws to change in some areas because I have been in jobs were removable media was not permitted, nor cell phones, nor cameras. I seriously doubt Gen Z will get a new rule set.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Except that violations of that kind are usually dealt with via fines or losing your compliance certification (which requires that you go through the process again after a certain time).
Which can both be translated into MONEY.
Yep. And again, that usually translated into a fine (MONEY) or loss of certification (MONEY).
Exactly. You don't see other employees "fixing" the locks on the doors, do you? Hey, it's easier for me if they're keyed the same as my house key. No problem, right?
Not to mention the implied requirement that every single employee doing that have the same (or higher) education/experience as the dedicated IT department. How many people out there don't even know that their machines are zombies?
Exactly. And if someone steals their iPhone which just happens to contain a copy of the customer database including credit card info ... that's even more MONEY that has to be spend in fines and PR and lost customers.
Personally, I don't see any way that using personal electronics for work can generate more revenue than it can cost.
Maybe I'll be wrong in the future. We'll have to wait and see.
The biggest entitlement problem with people and their own devices is they feel like they can use their work time for personal phone calls, tweeting, updating their facebook status, IMing, etc. The policy should be more like steal the company's time, your frickin' fired!
Sure, I agree with that. So long as the company recognizes that I'm not going to work on their projects on MY time. Lunch? Mine. Breaks? Mine. And I'll do whatever I want on my time - unless they want to pay for it. Then, well, it's not my time anymore.
Now, in all the bigger companies I've worked at, this hasn't been a problem. But when I jumped ship to a small (ish) business, the boss suddenly decided that he could bother me any time of day, no matter what I was doing, so long as I was at the office.
Suddenly, my lunch (which was at 10, not 1, because I started much earlier in the day at his request) was frequently interrupted by meetings or technical requests. My breaks were interrupted when clients had technical questions. I got stuck at the office 5-10 minutes late every day because there was always one more problem that couldn't wait until tomorrow. Sure, while there, I could use my own devices. In fact, if I didn't, I was stuck working on the POS that my boss provided (it was a hand-me-up from his supposedly technically inclined son) that had an underrated psu and a superfluous lighting system that had been hardwired on... which I wasn't allowed to modify, since he wasn't sure when his son would want it back.
So now I'm back at a big company. Sure, I'm just a replaceable cog in a big system... but my time is now my own.
Big businesses are going to have to become more flexible about how IT is provisioned and managed...
That's been true for years and it still isn't happening. Most companies don't even have their network segmented to make that possible. If they were working toward that end, they'd be separating the data from the network and isolating critical systems. It's not happening in many places I've seen.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Does the writer of the summary actually work? An iPhone is just a phone. On my floor alone, I think there are dozens of people with iPhones (myself included). No network needs to change, either you're on 3G or Edge ... What does this have to do with the company?
Agreed. So what if I can't network my device? I use HSPA for all my data needs, and look at my computer when I need to check my appointments. When I'm at work, I check the work computer for my appointments. If I don't have appointments ... I'm at work anyways. It doesn't matter if I can't check my personal device for my work calendar - I know my work hours, and I'll check my schedule when I'm there. Even better, I've only ever received ONE call at 10pm from my boss who *needed* something done in the AM because of a meeting, and I just said "Hey boss, you know what? I don't bring my work calendar home with me, but I'm pretty sure that meeting isn't until next week". Since the meeting actually *was* the next day, I think he got the point : I don't bring my work home with me, and I don't bring home to work. I keep them separate - if he wants to put me on call, he can pay me the extra $10k a year and hire me into that position.
No, don't fuck them. You'll get disease. Take a long, sharpened pole and drive it through their soft, squishy, boneless bodies. Pin them to the ground, pour gasoline on them and set them on fire.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
You've got to love how every article like this out there assumes Generation Z has any clue about technology. Most of the younger (10-20) people I know have less of an idea about what technology is (let alone how to operate it) than I did when I was 5. If external devices are allowed on your network, you are going to be compromised.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
At one of my old workplaces, they provided lockers to the call center folk because all their phones had cameras. They were to put their phones/cameras/ipods in the lockers before they were allowed in to the general building where they could finally be allowed to use the company provided computers. Bringing a camera on site wasn't just grounds for firing; the company would sue you (to get access to your electronic devices to determine if you used them on site).
ie, Gen Z needs to learn that they don't get to bring every new tech they own to work. I don't get to bring a railgun or a fog machine. If an iphone is essential to company productivity, the company will provide one. If *your* iPhone is essential to company productivity, then the company will buy it from you, wipe it, set appropriate app-store settings, then give it back to you.
Wake up!
You are a cost center.
You exist only to enable productive people to produce more efficiently.
You aren't in charge of anything.
You work for us.
Continue to annoy us and you will be replaced.
Just like the guy in the tool room that used to guard the pin gauges and the hammers like he owned them.
And the facilities guy who refused to add a 30 Amp circuit or run a Nitrogen line.
The IT support model that treats everyone like a serf doing word processing is over.
The design engineers need nonstandard hardware to do modeling. They might even need multiple computers.
In fact every individual user has specific and unusual needs that they understand better than you do.
And it's Not your call. Make it happen or go extinct. Computers aren't a new special thing anymore.
Many of us users understand every aspect of your network as well or better than you do,
we just have better things to do.
Things that are central to the business and make money.
Hey, this is your turf, and I understand that change is hard, and that you need to grumble, bitch, rant, whatever.
get it all out. It won't change anything though.
On company time. Who are sitting in HR signing out with staff ready to help them carry their boxes of personal belongings to car. Oh no no no, I don't think so.
Unlikely. IRL there are only two classes of people whose "time is their own": the filthy rich and the dirt poor.
Caveat Utilitor
Have a dual network. One wired to a desktop that's secure and then a WiFi system for the mobile devices that's open to the Internet and institute some serious penalties for screwing it up. Then let the chips fall where they may on the "open" side.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
how many I phones do you think that people bring into an office on any given day. network staff let them in because one day the CEO complains about not being able to update his linked-in status from his iphone and the practice of letting people connect anything to the network spreads to the rest of the company. it is a generally overlooked part of network security and it is only a matter of time before black hats utilize it as a vector of attack. mobile devices have to be thought of as a rouge laptop or server on your network because at the end of the day they are all the same. just a computer.
Exactly. And when the reporters come calling for quotes about how the crackers got the credit card numbers from us, it will NOT be the CEO who is fired for the security failure.
Not exactly. Someone else who CLAIMS that they can do it will be hired. What do I care? They'll be the one fired when the reporters come calling.
There will ALWAYS be SOMEONE who will claim to be able to do the impossible.
Remember that, people. The company will NOT waste a single moment firing you if it will protect the CEO. You don't owe the company a single moment of loyalty.
Do your job.
Collect your pay.
Advise them as best you can.
Move on when the situation calls for it.
IT people are the guys who keep the baddies out of the COMPANY network, the one that you want to connect all your little toys to. They're the ones who are charged with producing the most stuff from the least money, which requires common standards so they don't have to spend hours or days trying to work out why some manager didn't/couldn't read the 1-page of instructions with his/her latest trinket and set it up wrong.
The point is, we all work for the shareholders and they don't care if you want to use your latest little phone to access stuff. They want the lowest cost of operation, the fewest number of lawsuits for data loss and data thefts and they don't want different individuals craching their company on a daily basis just so they can show off some new status symbol.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Funny. I once worked for a company that did exactly the opposite: Do what you want, when you want, how you want. If you don't get your work done, you're fired.
This of course requires a boss who knows exactly what to (sensibly) expect from his workers. Something quite rare in management to be honest, but in this one company it actually worked. You got your assignment and a fairly reasonable deadline. Sure, sometimes projects run longer and you get an extension. Do it all the time and start looking for a new job.
They really didn't care too much when I came to work or went home, my weekly hours fluctuated between 20 and 80 hours, depending on workload and how I felt about work. There was no need to be there if all your projects are on hold because you're waiting for something, so I simply took a day off, on the other hand, 15 hours a day and more became necessary when a critical milestone had to be met.
This can work well if you have a very good management that has a very good idea how much time what tasks take, and can actually produce sensible project plans, can plan around blocks and can parallelize sensibly. Luckily, we had that. It can end in a complete disaster (and usually it does, as many here can certainly vouch for) if management has no idea what production times are reasonable and how to avoid blocking milestones.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've been bringing monitors, keyboards, mice, hard disks, memory to work for over 10 years. - Being an impatient nerd means I really don't care if work won't pay for me to have some nice hardware, if I'm on a machine for 8 hours+ a day, I want a nice big monitor, fast PC and comfortable equipment. I just installed an SSD at work recently, put the work supplied hard disk in a drawer labelled 'property of XYZ' - my SSD in the PC is labelled 'property of me' If I ever leave I assume I'll have to 0 out the drive but that's really not going to upset me.
My observation has been in the last 5 years security has become tighter and that there has been increased security. I use to be able to plug in my own laptop most places I worked. No longer. I use to be able to use social network sites and external email. Not for a few years now. Everything is getting locked down from SVN repositories to databases. Development environments including. Even developers are losing admin access on their own machines. If anything this trend is accelerating. I don't know what the person writing the article is smoking.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I never got that - it implies that everyone works better the same way, when it's not true. If a guy works better in small bursts of productivity with pauses instead of a continuum, why would you want him to get less done than he could?
In this type of desk jobs where everything can be logged, doesn't it make more sense to have an objectives based evaluation?
Dilbert RSS feed
MAC switch security, VLANs, captive portals, and a well-planned firewall goes a very long way towards idiot management. Very handy in nabbing who exactly is the idiot, too (including ourselves, if we fail to plan well).
...with "Generation Z" college students that we hire as summer interns. So far, our answer to personal devices is a pretty firm "no." They can check company email via the web interface from any internet-connected device, which is by far our most lenient security policy. Personal devices can join our guest WiFi network if they like (password changes every week), and any and all machines need to be in our asset database to join the LAN or connect up via VPN.
So far, they are fine with it. Well, OK, they bitch about it, but they like making money better than fighting for use of their personal devices.
:q!
The idea is silly at it's face. Provided you are properly equipping your staff there's no benefit in allowing people to bring their silly phone into the building. But the negatives are many fold.
If you aren't properly equipping their staff, you likely don't have the talent, equipment or software to integrate such devices safely. What I fear happening is that businesses that ARE highly qualified to pull something like this off, Google for example, will do so... and will have great results... there will be an article in Money magazine... and then all the idiots that run all the businesses that do not have the proper infrastructure to handle such a move will read about it and implement it to disastrous results which will lead to a backlash in security like "NO PHONES IN THE BUILDING PERIOD"
We are issuing certificates to personal devices and using SAML authentication to allow access to critical applications from the internet. We figure there will be no 'internal' network eventually everything will be done from the cloud. I can see this for sales type people who only need to work with some applications, but for those of us who own these applications it might be a bit more difficult.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
Unlikely. IRL there are only two classes of people whose "time is their own": the filthy rich and the dirt poor.
Perhaps I need to be clear : My time is my own when I am not whoring it out to a company. I know, reading the subtext is *hard*.
" .... CIOs should buckle up and brace themselves for a future .... " ... the onslaught of costs to defend your systems, viruses/troyans/malware interrupting work-flow, costs of looking after people cause they cant connect although you have given them a fool proof set of instructions, stealing of IP ... you name it its all there for the taking.
Brace alright
I have a wifi, but that sits in front of the firewall (as in the internet site) so they can connect there laptops but they need to use the VPN and the phones can use it too.
to code or not to code, that is the question.
There will ALWAYS be someone who will claim to be able to do it.
Don't waste time fighting them on that.
You will lose.
BUT! You will still be held responsible when the systems are cracked.
Find a new job where management isn't looking for magical snake oil and go work there.
Exactly. The guy peddling the magical snake oil will be sure that HE isn't the one blamed when HIS "solution" fails.
For everyone else, do you really want to work in a company where technology decisions are based upon fantasies?
And where responsibility falls depending upon who is leading which clique that has influence with which executive?
I don't. When politics becomes the product, it is time to leave.
Let me just put a word in here from a DoD employee: the government gets this, and says it's okay for smartphones (even with cameras!), just don't bring them into sensitive areas. The policy is different from place to place, but I have to say that if the *government* gets this, then it's basically over and private industry should adapt or die. Of course, where I work, we have very technical people, people who know the value of having a general purpose computer in their pocket; in decades of yore, you would have found them carrying HP and TI calculators, and if you told them they couldn't bring them in "due to security", you'd be looking for a new employee real quick.
Nathan's blog
In five years time, I'd expect people to go back to the way things ran in the 80's, only far nicer and more graphical.
Use my own computer, at home, connect to the office network, get the equivalent of a virtual desktop of a virtual "work computer" ... do work.
Why the heck would I, as a developer, database administrator, whatever, need to be in the physical office? It's 2011, right now I wonder why I go to my office in KC, when I'm either working on web apps being deployed to our hosting facility in California or am troubleshooting accounting issues on our Citrix farm somewhere on the east coast ... I don't even know what state the farm is housed in, I don't need to, it's a computer on the net, why would I even care?
I think the only reason I go to the office now is because the baby boomer bosses like to walk around the halls once a week and see people at their desks ...
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
Business is not going to tolerate smartphones which are slaves of the phone provider and tell them everything. That's why Blackberry is so successful. You can have your own Blackberry server with crypto between your server and your employees' phones. Crypto for which no external provider has the keys.
jacks0n may have been overly harsh, but he makes a good point. A friend of mine was in a certain air force, and his officer once addressed the group. Paraphrased, he said that their only job is to deliver missiles, and if you're not delivering missiles you better be making it easier for somebody to do that. IT is the same: your job is to enable by default, and disable only when you absolutely must. Now, when it's your job to answer for breaches, everything looks like a threat, yet while that's an understandable and useful frame of mind, it needs to be balanced with getting real work (remember, delivering missiles) done efficiently. Safety standards are useful, but there's a reason combat aircraft turn off anti-collision lights on missions.
In this case, I don't see portable electronics going away. In fact, I see them become more powerful, more highly-personal, and more popular, so IT Departments would be wise to find a way to keep them useful without compromising too much in security. Calling them "toys" or "whiz-bang gadgets" is a rather poor attitude for a geek who's supposed to see their uses better than the unwashed masses.
In my experience the biggest problem with corporate IT is risk aversion. Process is a substitute for trusted personnel, because it is hard to have the latter in a large organization, and it is easy to have the former.
If there is a massive security breach, the head of IT is likely to get fired over it (or maybe somebody one level down/etc). However, just about anybody in IT is capable of leaving open a door that would allow such a breach. So, there are tons of rules to try to prevent this, and tons of checks to make sure the rules are followed. Of course, a security breach is just one thing that can get messed up, and there are a million other bad things that can happen, and a bunch of rules to go along with each of them.
In a smaller company you hire people you trust, and actually invest in them. Sadly, that seems to be something lacking in most corporate IT departments. If you can't trust your employees, then you try to control them instead. It sort-of works, but it tends to prevent anything good from happening in the same way that it tends to prevent anything bad from happening. Mostly it is about having somebody else to blame when an underling turns out to be fallible.
Ah Yes, the ever so smart IT staff. Kinda like the Oracle dba, at my site who after being repeatedly warned by us "stoopid inguneers" that HR database was world readable to the outside world, had a "small" problem with personal data being released to the world. No us "stoopid inguneers" are not only trying to do our jobs, but keeping on top of the identity theft that resulted.Seems that the "inguneerin inturds" all have more understanding of security than the IT staff and refuse to connect their laptops running OpenSolaris/Linux because the network the IT staff installed at a cost of $5mil had so many security holes they did't dare risk problems with their own tools. Maybe you mean the highly qualified IT staff at a local university who decided to upgrade BlackBoard during finals week and had a "small" problem when the upgrade wiped out all the student final exams taken on Blackboard during finals week and deleted faculty gradebooks. The idiot CIO actually had the brass balls to "demand" that the students retake the final exams.
You give the person a Civic to drive. It's quiet, sedate, cheap, and boring.
You don't want a delivery employee playing Formula 1 while on the job. It makes them, late for deliveries because they get targeted by the cops and pulled over for driving a sports car (see "Ticket for LOOKING fast")
Their antics cause a crash and hurt someone? Lawsuit.
They crash the car on company time, they (and their insurance) expect the company to pay out for repair/replacement. Repairs on a Maserati cost more than BUYING a new Civic.
At the heart, this is about control of one's network.
If I say a device doesn't get on the network, it doesn't get on. Period.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
So, we're in the middle of a recession, and recent college graduates are going months without getting job offers, but somehow employers "need" to change for them? There seems to be quite a bit of disconnect from our present-day economic realities.
It's those low rungs on the IT ladder - those jobs that have gone offshore," said e-skills UK's Lux. As a result, she said the organisation is focusing on initiatives aimed at fostering "project-based learning" skills, so a new generation of tech workers can gain broader skills and plug into the UK IT job market as project managers.
Yep, make them all managers...because we all know the local the battle hardened industry veterans at the company are just as eager to take orders from the "new kid" as the off-shore team is...Riiiiight.
1. Not all organizations have the same security needs
2. For many people there aren't neat lines between work life and personal life
3. Turning this into a turf war doesn't do anyone any good.
I hope item 1 is self explanatory. There are places where I'd certainly hope that any type of personal device would be barred from connecting to the network. By the same token, there are organizations where it may not be nearly as important.
As far as item 2 goes my life isn't easily separated into work and personal. I'm sure I'm not alone. Policy at work is that company provided mobile phones cannot be used to make personal calls. They'll look the other way if it's a matter of a phone call here and there. Further a company mobile phone can be taken from me at any time. My calls can be tracked. Any data on the phone, no matter how personal, is available to them any time they want it. A calendar on my phone that only has my work schedule on it isn't adequate, but do I really want to have my marriage counseling appointments on there too?
Given that reality with a company provided mobile phone, who can blame an employee for wanting to use their own phone instead? As much as we IT folks see allowing personal phones to access our networks and house corporate data as a huge security risk, we have to understand that the desire to do so has a lot of legitimacy. Turning it into a turf war and just saying "No" isn't going to be good enough, even if we are certain it's in the company's best interest.
Far too often we in IT treat our users in a condescending manner and we move too slow. I overheard a sysadmin guy tell one of our Mac developers that he wouldn't get admin access to his own machine because we had to "protect him from himself". That's pretty much a direct quote. Never mind that the developer in question is far more qualified at configuring and maintaining a Mac than anyone on our sysadmin staff is. It's also very frustrating for staff to wait days or weeks for IT to get around to something that they themselves could take care of in a few minutes. So again, just saying "No" isn't good enough. Reasonable alternatives have to be considered and creative solutions are needed.
1. Partition the internal network, 99% of any intranet is plain jane no problems... 1% is business critical and needs to be locked up.
2. Use remote access to virtual desktops and apps to access the 1%; do not allow the data to sit on remote devices (even desk tops in the office)
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
I swear 30% of the responses I see talk about CEOs as borderline-psychopathic bullies who won't ever take no for an answer - and anyone who even tries to refuse a demand is escorted out the door before they've even finished saying the word "no".
Thing is, I don't believe I've ever known such a person to run a company. I've worked under at least one such little hitler (who was a middle manager), but IME those at the top know full well that they don't know everything, that delegation means you have to trust your staff to make sensible decisions and sometimes stop you from doing something silly.
In real world there are hidden agendas too. Kickbacks to an IT from software and hardware vendors are elephants in a room, speaking figuratively.
This the important part of an IT's motivation in every decision or policy.
Wow. Look, this is such a great challenge. When both sides of an argument have such strong feelings, in diametrically opposed directions, surely there's a chance to do some good in the world? It can't be that both sides are so wrong.
I mean, you IT folks are right: you keep the company network secure. And that's really hard, and also no-one really understands that it's hard, and you get the blame if it goes wrong. But, you know, if your company dictated what kind of paper you had to use, and you couldn't use your own, and when it ran out you couldn't write anything until Ink Technology had got you some more, and it only came in green; and you could only write on it with a Microsoft Pen, which you hated -- you'd be mad too, whether that was necessary for security or not. And you'd find a way round it, just like the users do.
So. Challenge: What radical thing has to happen to make this work? Redraw the secure perimeter somewhere else? Make most data available anyway? Get the government involved? Teach security in high school? What? I presume the answer is not easy, or obvious, or incremental. But if slashdot can't do it ...
- The Armchair Programmer
Bullshit from some "visionary".
If you need it for the job, the company will provide it. If you don't need it for the job, pay for your own damn bandwidth and keep your crap off the company network.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
How original! Yes, those dang old people. They sure can be rigid. I mean, they want you to work! Eight hours at a stretch!. I mean, who can do that? And of course, we certainly we never saw this story for generations x and y.... (Ahem).
To put not too fine a point on it, in this hiring environment, an inexperienced Gen-Z had better sit down, shut up, and do what the f*** I tell them to do in the way I tell them to do it or they're out. I have the money. They don't. They work for me. I don't work for them and I have better things to do than to accommodate a bunch of self-indulgent whiners.
If they want to form a start up for themselves, great, because after 10 years of running a business, they're going to think just like me. At that point, they might be worth hiring.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I work in a classified environment. I can't even bring a Shuffle to work let alone my iPhone/iPad/MBA.
"Remember, always drink upstream from the herd". Anno.
"Works for me" is not good enough - if you don't put the software you have developed onto something similar to a normal users environment you are only doing half the job. If it's someone else's job to do the testing that's fine and someone else's problem - but if it's your own responsibility you should not be lazy and provide yet another vector for malware onto user accounts that should not be run as admin.
"Without deviation from the norm, 'progress' is not possible."
Perhaps the reason the rest of the corporate world is eating America's lunch...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Bugger that. I want the IT guys handling my medical or financial information to put security above productivity, because if that stuff is mishandled I'm gonna be delayed much longer getting my life back in order.
That I agree with. My university gives professors and grad students admin on their machines. I wouldn't go to a hospital that did the same, however. There is a balance, and it varies with the sensitivity of the data.