Don't Network Administrators Require Privacy?

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Recently their company has decided to move the IT staff out of their offices to make room for the Service Department. The move has placed the IT staff in cubicles that all face inward and lack, obviously, the ability to lock their doors at night. This is, to them, an obvious breach in security and privacy for what may be sensitive network information. Have any other Slashdot readers dealt with this sort of problem before? If so, what specific information was best suited to rectify these security concerns?

Learn to read ROT-13.

[Anonymous Coward]

And hack your computer to display everything in ROT-13.

Battling Business Units!

[Zeebs]

The obvious answer is simply to wage war against any other units in the business that oppose your using that private space, or plans for world domination for instance. I saw it in a dilbert comic once, they have never steered me wrong before.

Who watches the watchmen?

[Aim Here]

"sensitive network information."

Uhuh. Would this sensitive network information be the log of all those websites you network admins visited last month, and that copy of Quake 4 you installed on the Company Mail Server?

Just because you guys are the only ones who have access to the firewall logs doesn't mean we don't know what you get up to.

Re:In a hallway

[Anonymous Coward]

The fun solution to that problem is to act like his secretary but follow through with 0 of the requests. Give this to him? Oh sure. Is he in his office? No, he's out for the day. His car is being towed? Ok, I'm calling him now. *smirk*

If anyone complains, blame it on their incompetence.

Dance fight

[3770]

Again, on Dilberts advice... You should probably hum west side story and have a dance fight.

Boo hoo!

[sulli]

Andy Grove had a cube too. Quit yer bitching.

Too Late

[biglig2]

This is a political argument, and you already lost. Ho hum.

I have no such problem, since, as sysadmin, I am the only person in our office who can work Visio, and consequently I am the person who draws all the floor plans when we rearrange the office.

Some suggestions...

[Slashdoc Beta]

1. Don't write down passwords.
2. Lock up sensetive information.
3. Have a wild cougar patrol the datacenter at night.

Re:Money talks

[Gyorg_Lavode]

you have obviously not worked with a defense contractor:

First you ask for a signifigant budget to conduct the analysis, THEN you spend that budget to come up with a second budget for what actually needs to be done.

Re:Learn to read ROT-13.

[eyegor]

ROT-13 isn't secure enough these days given the massive ammount of computing power at everyones fingertips. Double or even quad ROT-13 encoding is usually enough these days.

Salaries

[nick_davison]

1) Find the CFO's home directory.
2) Open up the salaries Excel doc.
3) Scroll to the execs - most likely at the top anyway.
4) Set your screensaver firmly to the off position.
5) Get permission from your boss to leave early.

Re:Man up, nancy.

[Drakonite]

What company gives regular IT people their own offices?

Nirvanacorp

Re:Locked Drawers

[Clubber Lang]

Not to make you sound stupid, but those locks on most file cabinets, desk drawers etc are complete and utter shit.

They use disk tumblers instead of pins like the lock in your house and can be consistently opened with a bent piece of stiff wire.

Do NOT think that those locks are security in anything but name. They exist solely to satisfy insurance companies that you "lock" things up.


Really?? Oh dude! I better take the Caramilk secret out of there then!

Re:Yes, and stripper girlfriends

[Afrosheen]

Just rock it old school. Place a motion detector with a light, just like people put on their homes near the driveway, facing your office door. Keep your office dark (you do anyway right?) and when people walk in, boom, you're hit with a 100W floodlamp. No amount of sneaky walking defeats that.

  Failing that you can rig the motion sensor to a pair of wires, wire it to a steel-framed chair you sit in, and have it shock you when they walk in. Even better, wire the door handle on your office with it, then you'll hear them yell every time they open the door.

yellow stickers

[krokodil]

I understand your frustration, but yellow stickers with root passwords attached to your monitor must go.

Re:Don't try to sound like a security expert...

[twalton]

terriffic.. another dire warning from an undergraduate.

Write us again in 15 years.

Re:Learn to read ROT-13.

[Urusai]

I personally like to use a one-time pad, which is proven to be the most secure form of encryption. I double it up for added security. Example:

CODE := PLAINTEXT xor PAD xor PAD;

This also has the advantage of obscuring the fact that a cipher is being used, in the finest steganographic tradition.