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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Seattle, WA

    Corporate IT Woes?

    There've been more than few posters lately, decrying that they are firewalled from visiting certain sites, etc. This also came up at work, how where I am, we're really lucky that nothing is locked down. (We're free to visit anywhere, install anything, as long as we don't violate patents, NDAs, etc.) But I had a friend who works at Amex; they were still running Lotus Notes, and she couldn't even change her desktop picture.

    So, what's it like where you are? Old or new equipment? Free to install/update or not? Access to YouTube, or only corporate Intranet?

    I'm really curious (no, this is not some hidden attempt at market research.)

    And EarlJam, feel free to chime in with how much this reminds you of work, and how that sux.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Clearwater, FL
    Our users do not have admin rights to their PCs or laptops, so they can't install or change anything (I work for a mortgage company...these are mostly processors and loan officers and they are dangerous believe me). The desktop lockdown has saved our help desk tons of time...they'd get a call that someone's PC was slow and wander over to find they had loaded a 200 picture slide show as their background, added the dancing jingle cats and were playing music while working...or the idiots who would say something was wrong with some application they had to use and we'd find out they'd reset their screen resolution down so that only half the stuff could display. Life is simpler now!
    We have a porno/violence/gambling filter on web access...beyond that they can go anywhere they want but they can't stream live video and/or audio from the branch offices but we can in the home office. That is due to a bandwith issue - we were getting constant compaints that our primary origination software was sloooowwww - a little investigation found that everyone and their brother was streaming their local radio station.
    For filtered sites, if it is filtered in error we can (and do) white list it. This has included sports sites which were wrongly filtered as gambling. We do log all web access but in the 4 years we've been doing that no one has ever looked at the logs.
    Those of us in IT have the keys to the kingdom, I can do anything I want on my laptop and PC and go anywhere.

    Most of our equipment is pretty new, not to say there aren't a few ancient desktops floating around in the remote sites.
    Windsor (aka Loni)

    a wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age

  3. #3
    Outbound access is wide open here, and everyone has admin access on their machines. We are a relatively small organization (sub 1000 employees), and it's a very tech heavy shop, so there would be a revolt if IT tried to lock things down.

    Until very recently, our IT took a very hard line on what types of machines they would purchase for us, and I really didn't like their choices, but we broke through that in a big way. Now it's pretty blissful.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    ← Bay / Valley ↓
    Small tech company, ~100 employees. we're supposed to use our own judgment on what we should/should not visit/download/install. Recently they did throttle our bandwidth to YouTube... though other video sites work fine. This is a pain in the uhh... behind when I'm reading some blogs that are youtube heavy (Jalopnik), even if I don't actually play them, seems to take longer to load the page.

    The worst abuse of our non-policy policy was, a couple months ago, a guy that I know was torrenting (downloading and uploading to many other users) Battle Star Gallactica (nerd tv show) episodes, during business hours no less. His excuse was "it was during lunch time"... Surprisingly, he still works here.
    Last edited by hc5duke; 07-12-2007 at 07:36 PM.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Winter Park FL
    Large, Senior Housing Corp. Painfully slow network which occasionally blows up. Average users have no administrator functions so can't add any peripherals, install, update anything without going through IT. Also has filters blocking gambling and adult sites. Occasionally messages pop up "This site has been banned due to .... Internet use is monitored and Logged." Thank God DBR is not blocked. Don't know how I'd get through the day.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Washington, DC
    Small research firm

    We use an ancient mail client and server but switching over to the all-mighty Outlook in September to the applause and relief of all. We have full admin rights on our machines and full access to the internet. Network claims to monitor our web surfing but no one really believes them. Streaming radio and video are strongly discouraged as they eat up our very limited bandwidth.

    In my previous job I was a consultant and I found that bigger the company, bigger the restrictions. I believe the tech companies like Microsoft and Google are the exceptions to this rule but I have never seen anything more restrictive than the computers at Fannie Mae and Coca Cola.

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