UK government pays Microsoft to extend XP updates

[ark_ader]

I remember my boss (CEO) coming into my office and asking me why I disabled USB/Floppy/Internet access to middle management and lower staff in the company.  The answer was increased security and 15% increase in productivity for my support department alone.  I even showed him the proxy logs for the past six months and what sites his middle management was accessing on a daily basis. 

Just begs for a reply.... This sounds so "old school IT like".   Who the ---fudgesicle--- are you to decide whether or not such access should be cut off?   

I was just the guy who ran the IT department.  Needless to say that the policy was still enforced after I left, and being in such an unique position I had the last word on IT policy.  After all I wrote it and got it all approved beforehand by the board. 

If my harsh IT policies were adopted today in corporate America (or anywhere else for that matter) you would not have as much of a problem as you do today with regard to computer security.

I would let you go immediately if you did that kind of crap in my IT Department.

Can you say with hand on heart that your IT system is 100% protected against all threats?   

[Dawgz Rule]

If the policy was such a great policy, why not apply it to everyone instead of middle management and lower staff?   Second, if the CEO came to you to ask why, it would seem inherently obvious that he was unaware of a policy that you implemented across the organization.  Last, I would compare your checking of internet activity to that of HR picking through personnel files.    Sure, the company has the right to blah, blah, blah.  BUT, it is not the role of IT to monitor employee productivity.  It is the responsibility of the individual manager to do so. 

Your "security" answer is simply an excuse and there is not a system around that is 100% protected against all threats....except the PC that is sitting in the box, powered off. 

Interestingly enough, I also run an IT Department and have built my career on fixing the crap that IT Managers such as yourself implemented before I came on board.  I treat my end users and staff with respect and not like little children that need the heavy hand of IT to dictate where they can go on the internet.   What else?  Did you lock down the desktops so nobody can change their background?

One last question....Was your internet locked down too or were you above that? 

[ark_ader]

If the policy was such a great policy, why not apply it to everyone instead of middle management and lower staff?   Second, if the CEO came to you to ask why, it would seem inherently obvious that he was unaware of a policy that you implemented across the organization.  Last, I would compare your checking of internet activity to that of HR picking through personnel files.    Sure, the company has the right to blah, blah, blah.  BUT, it is not the role of IT to monitor employee productivity.  It is the responsibility of the individual manager to do so. 

Your "security" answer is simply an excuse and there is not a system around that is 100% protected against all threats....except the PC that is sitting in the box, powered off. 

Interestingly enough, I also run an IT Department and have built my career on fixing the crap that IT Managers such as yourself implemented before I came on board.  I treat my end users and staff with respect and not like little children that need the heavy hand of IT to dictate where they can go on the internet.   What else?  Did you lock down the desktops so nobody can change their background?

One last question....Was your internet locked down too or were you above that?

That was the funny part.  The CEO came in asking after he signed on the IT policy.  Obviously I wasn't going to rub his nose into it.  I gave him something to chew on.  What I left out of my previous post was the problem of leaks to our competitors.  I just plugged the holes.  Desktops are locked down too.  Nobody could change anything.  If an individual needed access, it required management approval, and Internet was read only via TS client.  I had the keys to the kingdom, as did upper management. KISS.  I put two thin clients in the lunch room for internet access.

In that job, the IT Manager was sitting up there with the Directors.  As it should be.  I bet you are on the opposite side of the spectrum. . Just kidding.

My predecessor methods was one of the reasons why I was brought in.  I moved the organization into the cloud,  sacked all the IT staff and outsourced it to India.  Got a bonus too!

[Barry Barcrest]

I'm not buying the whole software incompatibility stuff either.  I'll remind you guys that all of the stuff I make around here is made with Visual Studio 6.0... which was released in 1998.  Still runs on windows 8.   

Yeah it runs but even getting it installed isn't a straight out of the box thing you have to create a file so the install will run through. Then you have the whole UAC thing and that can create some really hard to catch bugs especially if you are dealing with local files.

User experience with Visual Studio 6 App.
Windows XP > Install > Launch Short Cut.
Windows 7/8 > Install (As Admin and Not To Program Files) > Change Shortcut To Launch as Admin > Launch App.

While things do work they require more work to make them do so.