Governance the key if you don't want mobile workers escaping your control Mobile computing is great. No longer are we chained to our desks when using technology and doing proper work. Not only are laptops getting smaller, lighter and cheaper, it is also possible to do real, productive stuff even more freely using phones and tablets. As is always the case in computing, though, the positives of …
It's so full of BS I can't take it anymore. Basically the author is struggling to create a problem only in order to show us some solution he already has.
Short story should be like this: Thank you for accepting our job offer, here's your desk, your PC and a phone and if you need anything else do not hesitate to ask. For all this you will receive a monthly payment of $$$$. What's that, you don't like it ? Then have a great day and the door is over there!
And the moral : As an employer I'm hiring your brain, not your shiny gadget. You may be a hipster outside the company's premises in your free time.
I can't say I entirely trust the corporate Dell* from hell, on mine, so I usually connect it to the office via a 4G dongle.
* Think i5 slowed down to Atom level performance, by encryption and the fact that the Dell transmits a ton of information back to the mothership every day (rumour has it that even key presses are logged). I actually take a second laptop along, on business trips, for mobile banking and the like. Me? Paranoid? Nah!
Have I got this wrong? OA recommends that devices be set up so they wipe data when not in communication with server for a period of days. OA then cites the 3 minute time out as limiting the time that a thief has to hack/reset the machine. Surely a thief will just isolate device from network connection and hack away at their leisure?
PS: phone cameras are pretty good these days. Screens full of information can be snapped quite easily on trains or in coffee bars. A bit of staff training about where to access sensitive or commercially valuable information might be a good idea in addition to IT 'governance'.
> " I wonder if everyone in large companies is an irresponsible 14 year old."
It sure feels that way sometimes, but in their defence, they think they know better than those whose job it is to understand the technology, do the risk assessments, comply with regulations, configure approved solutions, implement coprorately agreed controls, and enforce the standards.
I'm constantly frustrated with the needy and greedy, jaded by the demanding and special, and more often than not cantankerous about the lot of them. To paraphrase a certain android: Users, loathe them or ignore them, you can't like them. Because they know better than you of course.
So obviously and nearly beer'o'clock... and I really, really, need it after this week.
The amusing/depressing (depending on your distance) version is when you have serious computer forensics and security/pen testing researchers on staff ... and the central IT team see a traffic spike on the web server from spidering, mistake it for a security issue, panic and pull the plug, rather than ask anyone more competent to explain it to them.
I get the impression it's a tough balancing act in large outfits between "IT" and other computing departments - the likes of Microsoft and Google seem to do well, perhaps because they have to, but as soon as you move away from a pure computing focus it becomes problematic. A setup that suits accountants and secretaries ("oh no, I moved the Word icon somewhere by mistake and can't find it") is never going to suit web developers ("I need the last version of Chrome installed - yes, and Opera, and Firefox... and these 11 development plugins too") let alone driver developers.
There's something faintly absurd about being expected to develop firmware and kernel-mode code - on a Windows PC which has the "Run" command disabled.
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