Posted on 07/31/2007 7:47:38 AM PDT by redfish53
Ten Things Your IT Department Won't Tell You By VAUHINI VARA July 30, 2007; Page R1
Admit it: For many of us, our work computer is a home away from home.
It seems only fair, since our home computer is typically an office away from the office. So in between typing up reports and poring over spreadsheets, we use our office PCs to keep up with our lives. We do birthday shopping, check out funny clips on YouTube and catch up with friends by email or instant message.
And often it's just easier to accomplish certain tasks using consumer technology than using the sometimes clunky office technology our company gives us -- compare Gmail with a corporate email account.
Security expert Mark Lobel of PricewaterhouseCoopers describes the most common things employees do on the internet to jeopardize company security. There's only one problem with what we're doing: Our employers sometimes don't like it. Partly, they want us to work while we're at work. And partly, they're afraid that what we're doing compromises the company's computer network -- putting the company at risk in a host of ways. So they've asked their information-technology departments to block us from bringing our home to work.
End of story? Not so fast. To find out whether it's possible to get around the IT departments, we asked Web experts for some advice. Specifically, we asked them to find the top 10 secrets our IT departments don't want us to know. How to surf to blocked sites without leaving any traces, for instance, or carry on instant-message chats without having to download software....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Corporations are pikers compared to universities. We get hammered constantly from inside and outside the wire. You install a new PC with the cable connected and you will get infected. It’s guaranteed. If the firewall is down, you are doomed.
We have guys who do nothing but isolate infected machines and watch for bad traffic.
As a teacher, I sometimes need access to my home computer for files or to personal email where something I need is at, and it is annoying as heck when schools block virtually everything.
Thank goodness for LogMeIn.com!!!!!!!!!
I am afraid it will be blocked this year though, and I will be out of luck.
Right; and you'll get your paycheck when one of us lower class people in accounting "get around to it"
The idea is that the company is a team, we're on the same side, and the company's goal is to serve the customer. The company sales rep can surf all he wants, wherever he wants, so long as more orders are coming in. All that matters is that the company gets rich serving the customer via the sales rep.
The IT is worth his paycheck only if he can serve the sales rep.
ping
Why don’t you go ahead and ahh take care of that cockroach problem? mmmKaaayy
Of course, there is logmein.com, which lets you access and control your computer remotely for free....no online storage at all.
However, I substitute taught last year and a few schools had already blocked it. I have been hired to teach this year and hope the district I am in allows it.
I need access to files on my home computer and web email sometimes, and it is really annoying when it is blocked.
bump for later... I’m at work =(
When I was in college last year, they decided to stop mandated installations of AVG at the beginning of the school year, and all hell broke loose. It took months to get rid of all the viruses.
I used to live in a cubicle for the federal gov't where for years I butted heads with IT sections that could do whatever they wanted in an organization not subject to the laws of economics. My heart goes out to you.
The good news is there's hope. Now I'm self employed. OK, I'm all alone when the system crashes, I'm having to remember my own passwords, I'm stuck with picking out and paying for all my own equipment,
and loving it!
Never have gotten good at running these damn computer things...
Can you block outgoing port 443? Probably not. That's what I use to run an SSH tunnel with proxy forwarding from work to my home network, where it is NATted to port 22 on my Unix box. Then I adjust Firefox so that not just http and https are proxied, but DNS lookups too. Been doing this for a couple of years with no problems at all. I can go to any web site I want in perfect encrypted secrecy.
-ccm
Stinky cheese might somehow appear in your air conditioning vent.
I often think that pieces of flair in an office enviroment would allow the engineers to express themselves
Nice. So, people that deliberately circumvent the rules and break their PCs deserve the same high level of service as those who - through no fault of their own - have a issue that's keeping them from working?
Between outside threats, management initiatives, and just normal wear-and-tear, I have enough real problems to fix without users screwing up their PCs on purpose.
You are mostly right about the sales team...everywhere I've worked, they get what they want. BUT - I've rarely met a salesperson that didn't go by the rules. It only takes "Weatherbug" or some other little gizmo Bluescreening their laptop in front of a customer -once- before they stick to the rules. Especially for the companies I've worked in that sell computers or software for a living.
Unless your IT guy is a sadist (and they do exist out there....people with a *little* power are dangerous) all of the standards are put in place for a reason.
Thanks for the ping. B4L8r
Must be a newbie. I don't remember him there when I was there. Well, maybe not based in the same office, that could be it ...
Yes and the network guys probably exclude their machines from the block(s).
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