laptops and holidays

[anivair.livejournal.com]

At work we give our salesmen laptops. they are not supposed to be for personal use. Personally, I don't care what they do with them as long as they fess up to it so I know, but they would likely be in a good deal of trouble if the GM found out that they had been doing anyhting non work related on them.

So why is it that after every holiday I come in and they are all screwed up?

"Chris, did you use your laptop at home over the holiday?"

"Me? Oh, no. course not."

"Well, then, where did your ip address and DNS go? Or your gateway settings? or your subnet mask? They're all set to auto, chris. Are you sure you didn't set it up at home?"

"No, it's been doing that ever since that last thing you did to my computer."

The "last thing" I did to his computer was over a week ago and it was setting up a printer. Right. I'm sure he just forgot to mention it till now (I'm equally certain that the new printer somehow opted to erase his network settings).

What the hell is wrong with these people? I swear it's like they think that we won't get the cause and effect. This guy's settings were so screwed up . . . he had two dialups and a WAN that we don't even use here. they were just sitting there doing nothign at work and one of the dial ups was his default. And we don't have dial up access. Grrr.

later,
~joe

Comments

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

As an ISP tech supporter, the number of times we get your (or similar) clients...

"Now is there something in that proxy setting?"

"Yes, now that you mention it."

"Well, that proxy setting and those network settings show that your laptop was set up for your work situation, and if we take those settings out, it'll work on our network but not back at the office. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yes please. The guys at work can always put it back afterwards..."

Sorry. But they all say it'll be all right when they go back to work.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

heh. It IS all right. Easy as pie to fix. I just wish they'd stop LYING about it to my face when the evidence is very clearly against them.

Ahh well.

[gholam.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it just be easier to set up an alternate configuration so that they can keep using it wherever they want? It'd likely save the company a good deal more in support cost than it would cost in "unauthorized usage" which happens anyway...

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I agree wholheartedly. Saddly we have a GM who is convinved that if he sets up a policy wherin he says that you don't use the laptops for unauthorized use that it won't happen. Obviously he's living in a fantasy world where people do what he says. But setting up another identity for them would violate that polcy (well, it wouldn't, but it would be tantamount to looking the other way, which he's not fond of). I tried to talk him into an acceptable use policy, but nooooo

[gholam.livejournal.com]

So put together an approximate number of support hours/month that this policy costs you, and then multiply it by the $/hour that it costs him :)

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

Don't forget to include the downtime of the affected employee too.

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

Easy as pie and less likely to get repeat offenders when you just image over his data. Bing bang boom. "Oh I'm sorry, did you have important personal files on there? :)

[eightofspades.livejournal.com]

Doesn't work when work-related files get kept on laptops too (mobility being a primary reason for them) and you also lose *those.* User service, et al.

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

Some IT departments aren't so nice.

[eightofspades.livejournal.com]

If the lying is the issue look at auditing and see if you can turn on audits for network setting changes.

You *should* but I haven't looked at security audit settings in over a year, so my memory is a bit hazy.

Alternatively, lock down their accounts, but I'm guessing that like my place, your place wouldn't be too keen on that.

[codedigital.livejournal.com]

setting up the printer i installed? did you convince mr. h. to leave it in the legal dept?

[anivair.livejournal.com]

same printer. We're leaving it in legal and if we need another one we'll just get another one. He finally listned to me!

[codedigital.livejournal.com]

it's about time.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

So, you guys don't particularly want your dolly back, do you? I'm calling squatter's rights.