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The dumbest security restriction I've dealt with is not giving devs local admin access to their work compeers. In a previous job I had to contact my manager eve

The dumbest security restriction I've dealt with is not giving devs local admin access to their work compeers. In a previous job I had to contact my manager every time I needed to install or update software. Sometimes he had to get approval from the IT gods before he could do anything. I usually just figured out ways to run applications without installing them. It was a huge waste of time. From what I understand a dev installed something bad one time so they punished everyone. Then again that's usually how these things happen.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Oh yes. Taking away admin access was one of the dumb ISO-whatever security restrictions they tried to impose on us top-down. We could retain it iff we signed a form that put any and all responsibility and blame for any problems coming from our admin access on us personally. Fortunately, right people in the right places arranged it so the forms got "lost", and admin access was not taken away.
666lumberjack 7y ago
I'm in a similar situation right now. In order to install new software onto my computer I have to get IT to add it to a company-wide whitelist, so I don't bother.
closeparen 7y ago
This is a pretty good “culture fit” question to ask a prospective employer in an interview. If the answer is wrong it won’t be the only thing wrong.
nieve 7y ago
At a previous employer that policy was continually causing problems and I'd been able to fly under their radar since all they did was issue hardware to myself and my minions†. Eventually IT staff came around needing the root password for my dev machine and things got awkward very quickly when I explained they didn't have internal clearance to log into it, much less view any data, and they'd have to go ask a senior vice president for direct approval in writing. They were some of the best IT people I've worked with, but they'd just run into a situation where they were the people who needed permission and they had to create exceptions on the fly. There's always going to be a place where the process breaks down and either you give the IT people room to adjust their policies or you make them sit on their hands and pretend nothing is going on. † Not my terminology.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Oh yes. Taking away admin access was one of the dumb ISO-whatever security restrictions they tried to impose on us top-down. We could retain it iff we signed a form that put any and all responsibility and blame for any problems coming from our admin access on us personally. Fortunately, right people in the right places arranged it so the forms got "lost", and admin access was not taken away.

666lumberjack 7y ago

I'm in a similar situation right now. In order to install new software onto my computer I have to get IT to add it to a company-wide whitelist, so I don't bother.

closeparen 7y ago

This is a pretty good “culture fit” question to ask a prospective employer in an interview. If the answer is wrong it won’t be the only thing wrong.

nieve 7y ago

At a previous employer that policy was continually causing problems and I'd been able to fly under their radar since all they did was issue hardware to myself and my minions†. Eventually IT staff came around needing the root password for my dev machine and things got awkward very quickly when I explained they didn't have internal clearance to log into it, much less view any data, and they'd have to go ask a senior vice president for direct approval in writing. They were some of the best IT people I've worked with, but they'd just run into a situation where they were the people who needed permission and they had to create exceptions on the fly. There's always going to be a place where the process breaks down and either you give the IT people room to adjust their policies or you make them sit on their hands and pretend nothing is going on. † Not my terminology.