An anonymous reader writes "Is letting users manage their own PCs an IT time-saver or time bomb waiting to happen? 'In this Web 2.0 self-service approach, IT knights employees with the responsibility for their own PC's life cycle. That's right: Workers select, configure, manage, and ultimately support their own systems, choosing the hardware and software they need to best perform their jobs.'" Do any of you do something similar to this in your workplace? Anyone think this is a spectacularly bad idea?
In a perfect world this would actually work. But then we'd run into pirating like crazy and companies being sued all of the the place. I certainly support a more liberal approach to what employees are allowed to use on their machines, but restrictions certainly need to be in place.
We already run this way at where I work. We're a small place and there's no in-house IT department. If one of us in development needs more ram or a new harddrive, the procedure is to go buy it and install it yourself and give management the bill. Nearly everyone is savvy enough to handle this on their own, and if you aren't its easy enough to ask someone to help you.
People in my shop can tell me what they want hardware wise, but most don't get more than user privileges. For a while I told people they can put anything on their machines as long as they drop off a license, but it just didn't work. Too many people bringing in "free but for commercial use" programs and running them in total disregard of the real licenses. Even worse, one guy brings it in after buying a registration, but 10 people copy it assuming "if he has it, it must be ok". Plus, my time needed for TLC due to user error has gone from 10h/week to 2h/month since all machines are locked down.
Selfish bastard of IT guy!
In my business, I force my users to submit all requests in triplicate and reject any that aren't perfect in spelling and I allow no smudges, tears, or other obvious defects on the submission. I provide the forms in the building basement and keep the inbox on the second floor.
Users are required to change their password every login. Only approved software is allowed on the machines and access to our intranet is strictly controlled by a hypervisor proxy installed on each and every machine.
Our one and only security breach was when my wife slapped me and choked the common network and local admin password out of me after she demoted me to assistant adjutant information technician.
She will pay for her insolence. I have already connected together the velcro-like fasteners on several of the baby's size 5 disposable diapers, creating a low cost darknet to create a denial-of-diaper attack on the server I used to control.
that stored the music. It's pretty reasonable to assume that well, lets see the music is stored under
C:\Documents and Settings\John User\Documents\My Music\Lita Ford
I think John User must have done it. I am pretty sure if you spell it out as policy against such actions, that the company would divert *.aa to the actual user that comitted the infraction. No amount of hand holding can really prevent this sort of thing. If they have access to the box, they have root right? That's what we say all the time here.
They will do stuff like this. It'll get worse as the younger generation grows into working age.
That's why I don't store too much personal data on my work computer, but access my own music via streams from orb.com
However, I guess we could just make it illegal to use workstations at work, and make everyone access company infrastructure via a terminal. Yeah GREAT IDEA...
What happens if your employee copies a bunch of MP3's to the PC, since they like to listen to music.
Most employees can probably do that unless it's locked down so tight they don't have access to windows media. Most companies don't do that because they may have their own company programs and training videos they want the employees to view. And then, if the employee has a USB drive you'd better remove the sound card because there are certainly portable apps [portableapps.com] that can just run it from there.
It's called personal responsiblity. I don't think most people are saying let the users go wild and install any software they want. But if they're dumb enough to install something illegal (MP3s, last time I looked, are not inherently illegal) they should be held responsible. When companies are proscuted is when BSA comes in and finds MS Office on EVERYONE's computer and they can only produce a license for one. (I don't think the RIAA would even bother with this as most companies DO restrict usage of P2P applications so no sharing would be available.)
But it does remind me of an BOFH (true story) that had the computers so locked down (Win95 days) you could not access Windows Explorer (aka File Explorer then) to try and keep users from installing or using rogue programs. (In fact I seem to remember, Win95 was actually on a server and his users had to log in to it.) Thank goodness I wasn't under his section. But my section taught department computer classes to get employees up to speed which is how we heard about what he was doing. Of course it made the computers unstable as hell....
There are better ways to deal with piracy than locking down computers. Nowadays, companies face all kinds of legal issues: discrimination suits, corruption investigations, export control laws... The standard solution is to force your employees to attend a bunch of brief classes covering these issues. I had to work through a half-dozen online lessons when I got my current job.
Piracy has nothing to do with the fondness of IT departments for locking down user computers. Really, it's a response to nitwits who fancy themselves experts and know just enough to get them into trouble. Of course, it's pretty frustrating for those of us who really do know what they're doing, but face it, we're a tiny minority.
A government institution, to be precise, and the locals were using government computers, government media (CDR's) and various other resources to pirate everything from Windows to Games for Windows... and you know what? I was nearly fired for bringing it up. Taking action with my "superiors" in IT over what I perceived to be a legitimate issue, and being not only stonewalled but also treated like scum, is what resulted in me tendering my resignation shortly thereafter. Total time on job? Less than a year... far less. Reason? Dirty business practices. Yes, this was a SCHOOL... these are the people teaching your kids what to think, and possibly (in rare instances of "good teachers") even how to think. Another example of government "honesty" and examples of justice. Piracy reigned, and when notified, my "superiors" felt offended that I did not remove the offending software. After much correspondence and arguments, and nothing getting done, I finally got fed up and left. There is a reason schools enjoy Linux like pricing on software. So many of the teachers pirate everything in sight, with full oversight of the various officials.
And then they teach kids that "crime doesn't pay". Talk about hypocrisy.
We have 7 techs supporting 2000+ computers in 800+ offices. We give guidance but we don't tell them they have to run them any any specific manner. The biggest advice is, "Boring is good".
License compliance is one detail were you can't offer any wiggle room. There are a number of good auditing software (including some free ones!) that will report on the installed software. That will keep you out of legal trouble.
1. User just deleted a "critical" data directory/file.
2. User just deleted an OS directory and their computer will not run.
3. User kept everything on his/her local drive and it just caught fire.
4. User wants an email from 3 years ago that user had deleted from his/her last computer 2 years ago.
5. The legal department wants all email to/from Mr.X, Mr.Y and Mr.Z.
6. User keeps getting infected with viruses.
With centralized control, all of those are simple. Once you start allowing users to choose what to run, how to configure it and so forth, all of those become major issues.
by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday April 02 2008, @05:12PM (#22945216)
1. User just deleted a "critical" data directory/file. backups exist.
2. User just deleted an OS directory and their computer will not run. backups exist.
3. User kept everything on his/her local drive and it just caught fire. backups exist.
4. User wants an email from 3 years ago that user had deleted from his/her last computer 2 years ago. see 5. (anyway, even many "managed/locked down" setup (like in small companies) don't have this one solved so, not a huge deal.
5. The legal department wants all email to/from Mr.X, Mr.Y and Mr.Z. email archived server side, without any implication on the client side
6. User keeps getting infected with viruses. enforce running AV
Letting the users do some stuff doesn't mean not running AV / backup. Of course, one can hack the machine to disable all of this.. but honestly.. these people can be fired too;)
I'm not saying it is the way to go, but your points are not really proving it one way or another.
I don't understand why parent is modded down. These are all valid answers to the issues listed.
No.They are not "valid answers" in a decentralized operation because there is no way you can backup the user's machines.
Saying that "backups exist" does not address the question of HOW the backups are made when the user can put any file anywhere on their system.
With a centralized system, the users can be restricted to ONLY saving files on their TEMP directory and the servers. Those are MUCH easier to backup and lots of packages exist for that exact purpose.
These are all easy to deal with if you have centralized control of the network, you don't have to control the end points.
1) You design your processes so that important files are centralized. Don't make it possible to do 'work' locally. Backup is handled on the network. Now the user has, at best, deleted something that was important to them (not your business) locally.
2) Reimage. See #1 in terms of what the user loses.
3) See #1.
4) everything using mail protocols recorded on the network.
5) see 4.
6) reimage, reimage, reimage until the user learns. have virus checker in the image (I guess user can possibly uninstall, but if you have a user with this chronic problem, respond to them more and more slowly / report them).
Giving the user control over their pc doesn't mean the same thing as giving up centralized services.
So you want to pay desktop support techs to re-image users' computers all the time? In our company re-image takes about 8 hours due to hard drive encryption, which translates into lost productivity of the user.
I've worked as a desktop support tech both in my college where users had admin rights to their PCs, and for a company that had locked-down environment with packaged software where almost nobody had admin rights and no non-approved software could be installed. I'd say on average I spent 3 times longer to put the users in the college back online, and to restore their data. Of course there's the whole issue of weatherbug/toolbars/ActiveX/other crapware that the users installed on a regular basis.
For a microcosm of this problem just look at users with local admin on their computers. Some people do fine. Other are always getting infected with crapware or calling with stupid questions, e.g. when they wanted to install printer drivers, but installed 300MB of printer crapware with 3 tray icons they don't understand.
I think it would work, user can do whatever they want... as long as the IT Admin can audit and dole out punishments like the angry fist of god. What's that? you installed utorrent and are sucking up all our intertubes bandwidth? Well I guess we will be unplugging you from the network since you can't act like a grownup and do your job.
The easiest way is to break your users into four groups:
1. The hopeless. The nice ones are actually thrilled when you can take some of your very busy time to deal with their problem.
2. The middle of the road. Many of these people are more than capable to turn into power users, they simply are too busy or just not interested. They are usually good about cooperating with IT because they see these problems as a distraction from whatever their job happens to be.
3. The ones that think that they are power users. These are more dangerous than a real computer illiterate moron. They know everything and will not hesitate to wipe their asses with your IT procedures under general principles. They also work behind your back, giving your users contradicting advice that creates confusion and resentment later. You'll spend an afternoon carefully crafting your business case for buying four brand new whatevers, for example, Mac Book Pros. At the same time, these idiots go behind your back and whisper into the right ear that Mac Book Pros are overpriced, that Mac Books will do fine. The purchase goes for the cheaper item, and when bad things happen, they will blame you regardless, while the weasela keep a low profile.
4. The real power users. These are the only ones that you can trust to do most of the management, more because not only they display the knowledge and experience, but also a healthy level of restraint. This is the kind of guy that knows what he is doing but won't mess with the equipment simply because he is bored. After all, he is busy enough doing his own job, no time to do yours unless he understands it to be a honest emergency.
The best combination I have seen so far was at a previous job during the dot com years. They didn't trust anyone, but once they figured out if you were not dangerous, they would yield control little by little. I was running all of the programmers in the company, and from early programmers and IT got along like thieves. As each new programmer got hired, we pretty much threatened to kick their asses if they did anything to antagonize the IT folks. It worked, as a norm my team's IT requests were handled faster and with less hassle than some other group full of prima donnas that treated the IT folks as if they were scum.
Bad idea for those that run shops with people who are clueless to computers. These types of people are walking disasters for the entire IT dept.
Good idea for those young-ins that know what they are doing with computers. These types of people not only already save the IT dept. a lot of hassle(I personally help numerous people in my area with computer problems that might otherwise get relegated to IT), but they will know how to work and manage all the software and tools that they opt to install.
Sure. I'm getting them to write their own software too, but the learning curve is a little steep. We would like to have them fabricating their own chipsets by 2010. Of course we'll have them start with FPGAs first before actual silicon, because that only makes sense.
Of course we'll have them start with FPGAs first before actual silicon, because that only makes sense.
Good idea. And while you're at it why not give them a mint, tuck them in at night and make sure that they have all their stuffed animals. Do you want employees or pussies?
For security reasons its always important to manage the AV, updates, etc. on the machine.
If you have important IP on laptops, it becomes even more important to have a good policy to manage machine health, rather than leaving it to individual discretion.
And finally, if you have well-defined and relatively narrow roles for which machines are required, again it makes sense to lock them down.
So depending on how much of the above is true, the answer will vary, but in general IT shops should not trust users to manage their own machines especially because users really don't know much when it comes to keeping a machine secure.
If I tried to go through my IT department to get anything done, I would never have time for work. Basically, I have to work from my home computer to get anything done. My work computer is absolutely worthless (can't install any software on it, most of the internet is blocked with Websense blocking software, takes months to get any software approved for it). Basically, I just finally told my boss that I would buy my own personal equipment and software and set that up at home. It serves me well, as I do freelance work at homne anyway.
If I went through IT at work, I would still be using Photoshop 5.0 and some ancient version of Pagemaker. They're so slow (and this is a true story, honest to God) that the last time they approved any work software for me, the company had stopped making the version they approved before they finally approved it.
"Basically, I just finally told my boss that I would buy my own personal equipment and software and set that up at home. It serves me well, as I do freelance work at homne anyway."
The vast majority of auto mechanics are expected to provide their own hand tools, and a well-stocked toolbox can run tens of thousands of dollars. Why not have users provide their own computer (cheap by comparison) if they support it?
I'd be happy to provide my own PC anywhere I worked if it were permitted. I bring my own peripherals anyway.
It certainly is. Toolkits have historically been provided by the mechanic (I've been a mechanic for many years), as the selection reflects personal preference. I found the link below by Googling the common phrase in want ads for mechanics "Must have own tools". The reason it is used is that only extreme newbs (or screwups who pawned their gear!) DON'T have their own tools. Mechanics often start their careers by buying tools as students (hence the vendor student discounts on basic sets) and will buy tools throughout their careers. Tool vendors visit shops and sell toolkits to mechanics on payment plans. It is common for tools to be insured because they are so expensive.
"The most important instruments a technician or mechanic uses are hand tools. Typically workers will use their own tools, and a lot of experienced technicians and mechanics own tool sets worth thousands of dollars."
"Most mechanics have to buy their own tools. As an apprentice, the mechanic may have to spend up to $500 or more on tools. By the time they reach journey- level, a mechanic may have spent up to $10,000 on tools. Mechanics with a specialty like those who work on foreign cars may spend even more on tools because foreign cars need metric tools."
So your first reaction, not knowing the other side of the story is to call an end user a liar, then rant about how most users are crooks out to scam there bosses. Yeah I'd just love to have you in charge of my work machine. What exactly are you trying to do here anyway? Stick up for the admin guy at the expense of the user? That whole us vs them mentality is inanely stupid. You're suppose to be helping these people get their work done first and foremost. Since looking up random sites that aren't work related may or may not be a sign that the user is not doing their job. The way I see it there's very little difference between browsing sites like myspace and reading a newspaper. (Parezhilton might be a bit much but the reason for that is that it immediately exposes the employer to law suits). It's their manager's job to keep them doing their work. If you've resorted to babysitting your employees you've got bigger issues. In any case I wonder how many non-work-related sites you visit and how many you justify as being work related when the situation is marginal. Did you post this from work?
I also wonder how well your "big boss" knows the work required and whether or not micro-managing his staff's PC configuration might be a bad use of his time. It certainly speaks volumes of what your company thinks of its employees.
Some of my users would and can do a fine job of that, but they're outnumbered by the ones who aren't trained and/or bright enough to be trusted administering their own box. Click on shiny! free tool to clean spyware that it just detected when you visited this website, oh yes. Install all kinds of crap and wonder why the computer's crawling & BSODing. Get us audited by the BSA, etc.
Maybe for the better sort of user, but gods no for the unwashed masses.
You can do all the hand-holding you can and they will STILL find a way to mess the machines up. And as long as management sees it as YOUR responsibility to clean up and correct the messes that uses create, you're nothing more than a janitor.
I have expressed the philosophy to various departmental management people that it doesn't matter whose 'responsibility' it is to get things fixed. It matters that things get broken. The amount of down time suffered happens regardless of who owns the responsibility, but can be avoided with more responsible behavior by the users.
I express that "these are your work tools. you mess them up and you're losing money until I can fix it again. There is nothing more I can offer."
I think that hits home with a lot of intelligent leaders.
So yes, give users control over their machines... but make sure they know that even though you're there to clean up the mess, the mess's fall-out is still on them. They will then take better care of their tool... their source of productivity and income.
Is letting users manage their own PCs an IT time-saver or time bomb waiting to happen?
It is both. I'm not sure about the new kids coming out of school, but us old-school computer guys are just as literate as most of the IT folks. The problem is that when we screw something up, it's screwed up pretty badly. I would venture to say that 95% of those who want to manage their computers can do so far more efficiently than the corporate IT staff. The other 5% will likely cause major grief.
For those in IT who think this is not the case, consider your power users. Many really can function - even if not to corporate standards of security or conformity - with very little help. They probably will spend an extra $200-$400 per machine for stuff that has marginal use, but they'll feel better about it and be productive. The problem is that there's that one guy - and everyone in IT know who he is - that is way out of his depth and just doesn't know it. You spend a lot of time praying he doesn't screw up more than his own workstation. The good thing is that considerably more than half of modern staffs will likely just want you to set it all up and keep it running.
In the case for users managing their own PCs, NASA used to be this way where I worked in the 90s. We ordered our own PCs, set them up, installed all software. The IT staff would help get us on the network and keep the network running. There were exceptionally few problems. This was, however, before most people had access to the internet, and predominantly before the web existed.
I worked as help desk at a bioinformatics research facility, with roughly 200 people, and I can fit the number of power users that I could remotely trust to run their own machine in one hand. And 3 of them have gone over our heads - one wiped his own RHEL Linux (not that I'm a fan, but it's managed) with his own Ubuntu install, causing us grief when we change settings. He also cause a Kent State Computing Science PhD (who's more like a n00b who can't type his password right) to demand the "same" setup, burning up weeks of time for 2 out of 4 IT staff, myself included. The other 2 would routinely try to install pirated software on work computers.
And we do try to install software in time for our users. We would try to allocate the right software in time, and if there's no reasonable way to do it (i.e. the user can't get the funding), we try to offer alternatives. In the past, yes, the IT department had been sluggish, but the majority of them have left, and we do try to provide good service.
Apparently, in a bioinformatics research facility, most of the staff who do research don't know jack about computers, or how to maintain them. If the users are allowed to manage their own machine, I would spend so much time fixing machines, I would want to jump off the building.
Thank god I left that place. It was bad enough with the existing setup. To think that most users can maintain their machines is pure folly.
I imagine this could work and work well in an IT shop full of software developers. However it isn't going to work if the users don't know an operating system from an aardvark. You'd still want some minimal rules like keeping the PC patched and good A/V software if you're running Windows. but I'd say it's doable.
What it isn't going to do is reduce your costs. You might have a very minimal help desk and no specialized staff installing those desktops but that knowledge, time and effort must be spread through the organization. You may also find it harder to get good deals on bulk purchasing depending on how you do it.
This sort of thing would never fly at a sufficiently large company. Once you get to a certain size, the pressure to "standardize" becomes too strong to resist. I suppose this is reasonable, because the licensing, support, etc. is much cheaper this way. Oh, and arguing that individual choice makes workers more productive is useless: productivity can't be easily measured -- therefore it doesn't exist.
In the days when I was on a large network, I thought it was a bad practice for the IT department to have better setups than the end users. Some IT people had not just faster computers but leaner images with less integration and less overhead. Their machines flew.
But of course they had no appreciation of how bad it was to be in the trenches. Their computers performed so much better than the equivalent computers of the end users that they often did not realize how hard it was to get work done on a standard image.
When I reached the point where I ran one of the departments, I kept an old standard-image computer as my main computer and made sure I was always at the end of the upgrade queue. My view was that if something worked well on my computer, it would work on anyone's. And if something didn't work well on my computer, then it meant some of my users were having a bad experience.
So maybe if the IT department would just use the same image and hardware as the end users, they'd know enough to provide a decent standard image, which would solve a lot of user complaints.
I have trouble convincing people not to set their beverages on the copier while waiting for jobs to complete. Give these people local admin rights and we're going to have smoke and shrapnel.
Have you considered putting a table right next to the copier?
Alternatively, if there's one already there, have you put coasters on it, as a hint?
And if it's got coasters already, have you considered purchasing a cheap mug, drinking coffee out of it just once so it'll have an authentic ring-stain in the bottom, and then setting it on one of those coasters permanently as an added hint?
Failing that, have you taken a bunch of tennis balls, cut them in half, duct taped them to the top of the copier and spray painted them the same beige as the rest so there's no flat place to put drinks?
Further, have you considered sneaking into their cubicles by dead of night and supergluing their cups and mugs to the desk?
If all else fails, have you considered supergluing your coworkers themselves to their desks? I bet their productivity would go up. The smell might get bad after a while, though...
Maybe end users have changed miraculously from when I was still doing desktop support, but I doubt it. IT doesn't develop policies limiting supported configurations just to be mean (generally). They do it because that's all they can in fact support given existing staffing and support metrics. Maybe you can get small numbers of users to be sufficiently knowledgeable that they can support themselves, but the overwhelming majority of users don't know enough, and don't *want* to know enough, to do this. They'd come to rely on some absurdly obscure or broken application, then call IT when it doesn't do what they want it to, and IT would have no idea how to fix it. Plus they'd end up with massive amounts of pirated material. The techs aren't going to memorize the manuals for every possible bit of code a user might take a fancy to, and they certainly can't test every possible combination of applications to test for incompatibilities.
Letting end users choose their own machines and apps sounds like a lovely and empowering idea, right up until the point where they need to call tech support. And find out that it might be days before IT can fix whatever is broken, since they are starting with zero idea what is wrong because of the wacky config. Those days of lost productivity can be hugely expensive compared to the costs of testing a few specific configs that can be easily and quickly supported. Some tech hours of advance testing and some possible minor losses of productivity from using applications that aren't the user's favorite choices are far cheaper than having an employee turn in no billable hours for several days because his computer is down.
It depends on the organization. I used to work in a 20 or so person division of a software company in which the technical staff were allowed to configure and maintain their machines, within certain constraints. The funny thing is that the primary development team ended up with the same software on their machines, the consulting engineers ended up with their own tool suite, and the marketing guys just relied on the support staff to keep them running. There were a few differences as far as text editor and debugging tool preferences, but generally you could sit down at any machine and expect it to have everything you needed - a virgin install contained our core tools and network stuff anyway. That said, it was *really* nice to be able to install a necessary program or utility without having to go through layers of bureaucracy.
However, I've also done stints at telcos and other massive organizations where things were incredibly locked down out of necessity/paranoia. I never had too much difficulty getting tools/permissions that I needed, but that was probably because of my role within the IT group. Had I been a marketing guy trying to install some sort of whacky video software, things might not have gone so smoothly.
Is letting users manage their own PCs an IT time-saver or time bomb waiting to happen?
It's a good idea if your users have a clue. It's a bad idea if they don't. It entirely depends on the users.
In my shop we're all coders, so that plan would work. In fact it's vital to our work. Originally we were locked down and had to have an admin install pretty much anything we wanted to use. IT became an inhibitor rather than a helper. They eventually had to lift the ban. The policy was in the way.
On the other side of the coin, I've also held IT positions managing users. Giving some of my former customers the keys would have been an immediate disaster. In that case a lockdown was a lifesaver.
At least the last 3 places I've worked. The Mac community helped itself out, at the largest site we had one formally trained Mac tech support person covering probably 150 or more Macs.
Then another place I worked, the one time the tech support people touched my Mac, they screwed it up...
On the other side, I watched an employee of a Fortune 50 company visit another company's location, where the latter would assign you a specific IP address to use. This guy didn't have enough privileges on his Windows box to configure the IP address on it, and of course his corporate help(less) desk's attitude was that they had to have the machine hooked up to the internet to remotely administer it. Catch-22...
Dilbert's "Mordac, Preventer of Information Services" is unfortunately the way of life for most corporate IT departments. When I'm King, every CIO will provide each employee with a charge number against the CIO's budget, when an IT problem prevents that employee from doing productive work.
Technically clueless users wouldn't know what to do anyway.
Technically savvy users need little more than an IP address and a beer to
do the right thing. Hell, our sysadmins consult with me to help
figure out how to do things right.
The middle ground is the one that makes me nervous. The nouveau-techie little
bit of knowledge types are the ones that scare me.
I've installed and configured everything in my cubicle, and have root/admin
access as well, because I need it. This is as it should be. I do not have root access to our main file server, because
I do not need it. This is also as it should be.
It entirely depends on the company. Small companies, Linux shops, and engineering-focused companies work better with people maintaining their own machines.
I work at a Linux-based network security startup. Engineers maintain our own Linux boxen, IT maintains the Windows boxes given to non-engineers. Most employees, engineers included, have Windows laptops assigned to them as well; those laptops are maintained by IT. Of course, we're a small company...IT consists of one person in our US office and one person in our India office.
Not much piracy concerns with Linux; we don't run any commercial distros on our desktops (we run a hodgepodge of Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora), and none of us have any use for Linux commercial software.
The last couple of companies I've worked in, have made the decision to allow us -employees- to admin. our PCs.
We are mostly semi-senior developers: we have the knowledge to make our computers perform their best, and we know what we want -and need- from them. No one else -not even support dept.- can know what service, application or tool is best for us and, being highly trained, we're the best admins. these computers could have.
-- For instance, even though we need to use Windows XP, no one uses IE --
And last (but definetely not least), this is what we *do*. Most of us could hack through the security policies if they were there. I don't think that having over a hundreed skilled developers trying to bring down your security infrastructure is the best way to go.
Whenever I start my own company (that's right, I still like to daydream), I'll make sure I hire talented, trustworthy people, and grant them admin. rights of their PCs.
PS: Note that admin. of PCs != network admin. Everyone here should appreciate the difference
As someone who has worked for 10 years as a network admin, the answer is NO.
Yes, there are special cases out there. But they are special cases. By default, the only policy that works is to lock down a machine and grant access as needed. Too many people treat an unrestricted machine like a "rental." They abuse it. They don't take simple precautions because, hey, it's the company's machine. Given a chance, they will treat it as a personal plaything.
To deny these truths is to deny basic sociology. And as I said, 10 years of first hand experience that is amplified by every competent admin I know.
My old(as in previous) boss is finally retiring at the age of 80. he was still working a 55-60 hour work week.
He didn't need the money, but did it so he wouldn't get bored. I have another friend who is 63 has 4 seasonal jobs to keep himself busy and gives him just enough extra cash to play. he doesn't need the work, but he works to keep himself going.
You don't have to stop hard when you retire, you just change priorities.
in the perfect world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your shop may be small enough to avoid attention, but allowing users to install their own software could put a company in hot water fast.
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Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Funny)
Users are required to change their password every login. Only approved software is allowed on the machines and access to our intranet is strictly controlled by a hypervisor proxy installed on each and every machine.
Our one and only security breach was when my wife slapped me and choked the common network and local admin password out of me after she demoted me to assistant adjutant information technician.
She will pay for her insolence. I have already connected together the velcro-like fasteners on several of the baby's size 5 disposable diapers, creating a low cost darknet to create a denial-of-diaper attack on the server I used to control.
She will pay
Parent
But it wasn't the companies profile (Score:4, Insightful)
C:\Documents and Settings\John User\Documents\My Music\Lita Ford
I think John User must have done it. I am pretty sure if you spell it out as policy against such actions, that the company would divert *.aa to the actual user that comitted the infraction. No amount of hand holding can really prevent this sort of thing. If they have access to the box, they have root right? That's what we say all the time here.
They will do stuff like this. It'll get worse as the younger generation grows into working age.
That's why I don't store too much personal data on my work computer, but access my own music via streams from orb.com
However, I guess we could just make it illegal to use workstations at work, and make everyone access company infrastructure via a terminal. Yeah GREAT IDEA...
Parent
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:4, Interesting)
What happens if your employee copies a bunch of MP3's to the PC, since they like to listen to music.
Most employees can probably do that unless it's locked down so tight they don't have access to windows media. Most companies don't do that because they may have their own company programs and training videos they want the employees to view. And then, if the employee has a USB drive you'd better remove the sound card because there are certainly portable apps [portableapps.com] that can just run it from there.
It's called personal responsiblity. I don't think most people are saying let the users go wild and install any software they want. But if they're dumb enough to install something illegal (MP3s, last time I looked, are not inherently illegal) they should be held responsible. When companies are proscuted is when BSA comes in and finds MS Office on EVERYONE's computer and they can only produce a license for one. (I don't think the RIAA would even bother with this as most companies DO restrict usage of P2P applications so no sharing would be available.)
But it does remind me of an BOFH (true story) that had the computers so locked down (Win95 days) you could not access Windows Explorer (aka File Explorer then) to try and keep users from installing or using rogue programs. (In fact I seem to remember, Win95 was actually on a server and his users had to log in to it.) Thank goodness I wasn't under his section. But my section taught department computer classes to get employees up to speed which is how we heard about what he was doing. Of course it made the computers unstable as hell....
Parent
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy has nothing to do with the fondness of IT departments for locking down user computers. Really, it's a response to nitwits who fancy themselves experts and know just enough to get them into trouble. Of course, it's pretty frustrating for those of us who really do know what they're doing, but face it, we're a tiny minority.
Parent
I worked as a site tech in one place... (Score:5, Interesting)
And then they teach kids that "crime doesn't pay". Talk about hypocrisy.
Another reason to pick up homeschooling.
Parent
Re:I worked as a site tech in one place... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, this was a SCHOOL... these are the people teaching your kids what to think...
I like to let the TV teach my kid what to think
Parent
Run it for an imperfect world (Score:5, Informative)
License compliance is one detail were you can't offer any wiggle room. There are a number of good auditing software (including some free ones!) that will report on the installed software. That will keep you out of legal trouble.
Parent
How do you handle the following issues? (Score:4, Insightful)
2. User just deleted an OS directory and their computer will not run.
3. User kept everything on his/her local drive and it just caught fire.
4. User wants an email from 3 years ago that user had deleted from his/her last computer 2 years ago.
5. The legal department wants all email to/from Mr.X, Mr.Y and Mr.Z.
6. User keeps getting infected with viruses.
With centralized control, all of those are simple. Once you start allowing users to choose what to run, how to configure it and so forth, all of those become major issues.
Parent
Re:How do you handle the following issues? (Score:4, Insightful)
backups exist.
2. User just deleted an OS directory and their computer will not run.
backups exist.
3. User kept everything on his/her local drive and it just caught fire.
backups exist.
4. User wants an email from 3 years ago that user had deleted from his/her last computer 2 years ago.
see 5. (anyway, even many "managed/locked down" setup (like in small companies) don't have this one solved so, not a huge deal.
5. The legal department wants all email to/from Mr.X, Mr.Y and Mr.Z.
email archived server side, without any implication on the client side
6. User keeps getting infected with viruses.
enforce running AV
Letting the users do some stuff doesn't mean not running AV / backup. Of course, one can hack the machine to disable all of this.. but honestly.. these people can be fired too
I'm not saying it is the way to go, but your points are not really proving it one way or another.
Parent
They are valid ONLY for centralized operations. (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying that "backups exist" does not address the question of HOW the backups are made when the user can put any file anywhere on their system.
With a centralized system, the users can be restricted to ONLY saving files on their TEMP directory and the servers. Those are MUCH easier to backup and lots of packages exist for that exact purpose.
Parent
Re:How do you handle the following issues? (Score:4, Insightful)
1) You design your processes so that important files are centralized. Don't make it possible to do 'work' locally. Backup is handled on the network. Now the user has, at best, deleted something that was important to them (not your business) locally.
2) Reimage. See #1 in terms of what the user loses.
3) See #1.
4) everything using mail protocols recorded on the network.
5) see 4.
6) reimage, reimage, reimage until the user learns. have virus checker in the image (I guess user can possibly uninstall, but if you have a user with this chronic problem, respond to them more and more slowly / report them).
Giving the user control over their pc doesn't mean the same thing as giving up centralized services.
Parent
Re:How do you handle the following issues? (Score:5, Insightful)
So you want to pay desktop support techs to re-image users' computers all the time? In our company re-image takes about 8 hours due to hard drive encryption, which translates into lost productivity of the user.
I've worked as a desktop support tech both in my college where users had admin rights to their PCs, and for a company that had locked-down environment with packaged software where almost nobody had admin rights and no non-approved software could be installed. I'd say on average I spent 3 times longer to put the users in the college back online, and to restore their data. Of course there's the whole issue of weatherbug/toolbars/ActiveX/other crapware that the users installed on a regular basis.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How silly. TFS said the users got to manage their own PCs, not the routers or switches
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Funny)
Can those people really manage their own machines?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Works for me.
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Insightful)
The easiest way is to break your users into four groups:
1. The hopeless. The nice ones are actually thrilled when you can take some of your very busy time to deal with their problem.
2. The middle of the road. Many of these people are more than capable to turn into power users, they simply are too busy or just not interested. They are usually good about cooperating with IT because they see these problems as a distraction from whatever their job happens to be.
3. The ones that think that they are power users. These are more dangerous than a real computer illiterate moron. They know everything and will not hesitate to wipe their asses with your IT procedures under general principles. They also work behind your back, giving your users contradicting advice that creates confusion and resentment later. You'll spend an afternoon carefully crafting your business case for buying four brand new whatevers, for example, Mac Book Pros. At the same time, these idiots go behind your back and whisper into the right ear that Mac Book Pros are overpriced, that Mac Books will do fine. The purchase goes for the cheaper item, and when bad things happen, they will blame you regardless, while the weasela keep a low profile.
4. The real power users. These are the only ones that you can trust to do most of the management, more because not only they display the knowledge and experience, but also a healthy level of restraint. This is the kind of guy that knows what he is doing but won't mess with the equipment simply because he is bored. After all, he is busy enough doing his own job, no time to do yours unless he understands it to be a honest emergency.
The best combination I have seen so far was at a previous job during the dot com years. They didn't trust anyone, but once they figured out if you were not dangerous, they would yield control little by little. I was running all of the programmers in the company, and from early programmers and IT got along like thieves. As each new programmer got hired, we pretty much threatened to kick their asses if they did anything to antagonize the IT folks. It worked, as a norm my team's IT requests were handled faster and with less hassle than some other group full of prima donnas that treated the IT folks as if they were scum.
Parent
mixed feelings (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Tagging? (Score:5, Funny)
One Size Cannot Fit All (Score:5, Insightful)
So the answer is basically, "it depends".
For security reasons its always important to manage the AV, updates, etc. on the machine.
If you have important IP on laptops, it becomes even more important to have a good policy to manage machine health, rather than leaving it to individual discretion.
And finally, if you have well-defined and relatively narrow roles for which machines are required, again it makes sense to lock them down.
So depending on how much of the above is true, the answer will vary, but in general IT shops should not trust users to manage their own machines especially because users really don't know much when it comes to keeping a machine secure.
I should be so lucky (Score:5, Insightful)
If I went through IT at work, I would still be using Photoshop 5.0 and some ancient version of Pagemaker. They're so slow (and this is a true story, honest to God) that the last time they approved any work software for me, the company had stopped making the version they approved before they finally approved it.
Re:I should be so lucky (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of auto mechanics are expected to provide their own hand tools, and a well-stocked toolbox can run tens of thousands of dollars. Why not have users provide their own computer (cheap by comparison) if they support it?
I'd be happy to provide my own PC anywhere I worked if it were permitted. I bring my own peripherals anyway.
Parent
Re:I should be so lucky (Score:4, Interesting)
It certainly is. Toolkits have historically been provided by the mechanic (I've been a mechanic for many years), as the selection reflects personal preference. I found the link below by Googling the common phrase in want ads for mechanics "Must have own tools". The reason it is used is that only extreme newbs (or screwups who pawned their gear!) DON'T have their own tools. Mechanics often start their careers by buying tools as students (hence the vendor student discounts on basic sets) and will buy tools throughout their careers. Tool vendors visit shops and sell toolkits to mechanics on payment plans. It is common for tools to be insured because they are so expensive.
http://www.careeroverview.com/auto-mechanic-careers.html [careeroverview.com]
"The most important instruments a technician or mechanic uses are hand tools. Typically workers will use their own tools, and a lot of experienced technicians and mechanics own tool sets worth thousands of dollars."
http://www.calmis.ca.gov/file/occguide/MECHAUTO.HTM [ca.gov] (note the date, the price figures are low)
"Most mechanics have to buy their own tools. As an apprentice, the mechanic
may have to spend up to $500 or more on tools. By the time they reach journey-
level, a mechanic may have spent up to $10,000 on tools. Mechanics with a
specialty like those who work on foreign cars may spend even more on tools
because foreign cars need metric tools."
Parent
Re:I should be so lucky (Score:4, Insightful)
I also wonder how well your "big boss" knows the work required and whether or not micro-managing his staff's PC configuration might be a bad use of his time. It certainly speaks volumes of what your company thinks of its employees.
Parent
Fuck no (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe for the better sort of user, but gods no for the unwashed masses.
Middle ground is a good place for me (Score:3, Insightful)
I have expressed the philosophy to various departmental management people that it doesn't matter whose 'responsibility' it is to get things fixed. It matters that things get broken. The amount of down time suffered happens regardless of who owns the responsibility, but can be avoided with more responsible behavior by the users.
I express that "these are your work tools. you mess them up and you're losing money until I can fix it again. There is nothing more I can offer."
I think that hits home with a lot of intelligent leaders.
So yes, give users control over their machines... but make sure they know that even though you're there to clean up the mess, the mess's fall-out is still on them. They will then take better care of their tool... their source of productivity and income.
The answer is yes (Score:5, Insightful)
For those in IT who think this is not the case, consider your power users. Many really can function - even if not to corporate standards of security or conformity - with very little help. They probably will spend an extra $200-$400 per machine for stuff that has marginal use, but they'll feel better about it and be productive. The problem is that there's that one guy - and everyone in IT know who he is - that is way out of his depth and just doesn't know it. You spend a lot of time praying he doesn't screw up more than his own workstation. The good thing is that considerably more than half of modern staffs will likely just want you to set it all up and keep it running.
In the case for users managing their own PCs, NASA used to be this way where I worked in the 90s. We ordered our own PCs, set them up, installed all software. The IT staff would help get us on the network and keep the network running. There were exceptionally few problems. This was, however, before most people had access to the internet, and predominantly before the web existed.
You're out of your mind (Score:4, Informative)
And we do try to install software in time for our users. We would try to allocate the right software in time, and if there's no reasonable way to do it (i.e. the user can't get the funding), we try to offer alternatives. In the past, yes, the IT department had been sluggish, but the majority of them have left, and we do try to provide good service.
Apparently, in a bioinformatics research facility, most of the staff who do research don't know jack about computers, or how to maintain them. If the users are allowed to manage their own machine, I would spend so much time fixing machines, I would want to jump off the building.
Thank god I left that place. It was bad enough with the existing setup. To think that most users can maintain their machines is pure folly.
Parent
Could work if the users are technical enough (Score:3, Interesting)
What it isn't going to do is reduce your costs. You might have a very minimal help desk and no specialized staff installing those desktops but that knowledge, time and effort must be spread through the organization. You may also find it harder to get good deals on bulk purchasing depending on how you do it.
For small companies only (Score:5, Insightful)
Goose versus Gander (Score:5, Interesting)
But of course they had no appreciation of how bad it was to be in the trenches. Their computers performed so much better than the equivalent computers of the end users that they often did not realize how hard it was to get work done on a standard image.
When I reached the point where I ran one of the departments, I kept an old standard-image computer as my main computer and made sure I was always at the end of the upgrade queue. My view was that if something worked well on my computer, it would work on anyone's. And if something didn't work well on my computer, then it meant some of my users were having a bad experience.
So maybe if the IT department would just use the same image and hardware as the end users, they'd know enough to provide a decent standard image, which would solve a lot of user complaints.
madness!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:madness!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Alternatively, if there's one already there, have you put coasters on it, as a hint?
And if it's got coasters already, have you considered purchasing a cheap mug, drinking coffee out of it just once so it'll have an authentic ring-stain in the bottom, and then setting it on one of those coasters permanently as an added hint?
Failing that, have you taken a bunch of tennis balls, cut them in half, duct taped them to the top of the copier and spray painted them the same beige as the rest so there's no flat place to put drinks?
Further, have you considered sneaking into their cubicles by dead of night and supergluing their cups and mugs to the desk?
If all else fails, have you considered supergluing your coworkers themselves to their desks? I bet their productivity would go up. The smell might get bad after a while, though
Parent
Did web 2.0 magically make end users not stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Letting end users choose their own machines and apps sounds like a lovely and empowering idea, right up until the point where they need to call tech support. And find out that it might be days before IT can fix whatever is broken, since they are starting with zero idea what is wrong because of the wacky config. Those days of lost productivity can be hugely expensive compared to the costs of testing a few specific configs that can be easily and quickly supported. Some tech hours of advance testing and some possible minor losses of productivity from using applications that aren't the user's favorite choices are far cheaper than having an employee turn in no billable hours for several days because his computer is down.
well... (Score:4, Informative)
It depends on the organization. I used to work in a 20 or so person division of a software company in which the technical staff were allowed to configure and maintain their machines, within certain constraints. The funny thing is that the primary development team ended up with the same software on their machines, the consulting engineers ended up with their own tool suite, and the marketing guys just relied on the support staff to keep them running. There were a few differences as far as text editor and debugging tool preferences, but generally you could sit down at any machine and expect it to have everything you needed - a virgin install contained our core tools and network stuff anyway. That said, it was *really* nice to be able to install a necessary program or utility without having to go through layers of bureaucracy.
However, I've also done stints at telcos and other massive organizations where things were incredibly locked down out of necessity/paranoia. I never had too much difficulty getting tools/permissions that I needed, but that was probably because of my role within the IT group. Had I been a marketing guy trying to install some sort of whacky video software, things might not have gone so smoothly.
The question is too broad (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a good idea if your users have a clue. It's a bad idea if they don't. It entirely depends on the users.
In my shop we're all coders, so that plan would work. In fact it's vital to our work. Originally we were locked down and had to have an admin install pretty much anything we wanted to use. IT became an inhibitor rather than a helper. They eventually had to lift the ban. The policy was in the way.
On the other side of the coin, I've also held IT positions managing users. Giving some of my former customers the keys would have been an immediate disaster. In that case a lockdown was a lifesaver.
Standard practice for Mac users (Score:3, Interesting)
Then another place I worked, the one time the tech support people touched my Mac, they screwed it up...
On the other side, I watched an employee of a Fortune 50 company visit another company's location, where the latter would assign you a specific IP address to use. This guy didn't have enough privileges on his Windows box to configure the IP address on it, and of course his corporate help(less) desk's attitude was that they had to have the machine hooked up to the internet to remotely administer it. Catch-22...
Dilbert's "Mordac, Preventer of Information Services" is unfortunately the way of life for most corporate IT departments. When I'm King, every CIO will provide each employee with a charge number against the CIO's budget, when an IT problem prevents that employee from doing productive work.
dave
Clueful, Clueless and those in-between (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends on how technically savvy the users are.
Technically clueless users wouldn't know what to do anyway.
Technically savvy users need little more than an IP address and a beer to do the right thing. Hell, our sysadmins consult with me to help figure out how to do things right.
The middle ground is the one that makes me nervous. The nouveau-techie little bit of knowledge types are the ones that scare me.
I've installed and configured everything in my cubicle, and have root/admin access as well, because I need it. This is as it should be. I do not have root access to our main file server, because I do not need it. This is also as it should be.
...laura
Depends on the company (Score:3, Informative)
I work at a Linux-based network security startup. Engineers maintain our own Linux boxen, IT maintains the Windows boxes given to non-engineers. Most employees, engineers included, have Windows laptops assigned to them as well; those laptops are maintained by IT. Of course, we're a small company...IT consists of one person in our US office and one person in our India office.
Not much piracy concerns with Linux; we don't run any commercial distros on our desktops (we run a hodgepodge of Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora), and none of us have any use for Linux commercial software.
In IT, they should, and they must (Score:4, Insightful)
Like most slashdotters, I'm in IT.
The last couple of companies I've worked in, have made the decision to allow us -employees- to admin. our PCs. We are mostly semi-senior developers: we have the knowledge to make our computers perform their best, and we know what we want -and need- from them. No one else -not even support dept.- can know what service, application or tool is best for us and, being highly trained, we're the best admins. these computers could have.
-- For instance, even though we need to use Windows XP, no one uses IE --
And last (but definetely not least), this is what we *do*. Most of us could hack through the security policies if they were there. I don't think that having over a hundreed skilled developers trying to bring down your security infrastructure is the best way to go.
Whenever I start my own company (that's right, I still like to daydream), I'll make sure I hire talented, trustworthy people, and grant them admin. rights of their PCs.
PS: Note that admin. of PCs != network admin. Everyone here should appreciate the difference
NOOOoooo (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, there are special cases out there. But they are special cases. By default, the only policy that works is to lock down a machine and grant access as needed. Too many people treat an unrestricted machine like a "rental." They abuse it. They don't take simple precautions because, hey, it's the company's machine. Given a chance, they will treat it as a personal plaything.
To deny these truths is to deny basic sociology. And as I said, 10 years of first hand experience that is amplified by every competent admin I know.
Re:Select own software? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think he knows the difference between a 401K and lottery tickets either.
Parent
Re:Select own software? (Score:4, Insightful)
He didn't need the money, but did it so he wouldn't get bored. I have another friend who is 63 has 4 seasonal jobs to keep himself busy and gives him just enough extra cash to play. he doesn't need the work, but he works to keep himself going.
You don't have to stop hard when you retire, you just change priorities.
Parent