3 ms·

> You can't blame a company for wanted to protect itself against a disgruntled employee that wants to push the (example - not applicable to your company) ebanki

> You can't blame a company for wanted to protect itself against a disgruntled employee that wants to push the (example - not applicable to your company) ebanking software code out in the open. The thing is, they can't, not if my PC is still usable for day to day work. For a legitimate user, the ways to extricate data are endless (e.g. tunnel out via DNS, embed into video streams (for customer training or something), hell, even simple stuff like embedding data into the monstrous modern MS Office files should fly under the radar). The real value comes from making certain that a) only those that need access, get access (e.g. why do I have read/write access to the sales file folder as a developer?) and b) minimize the result of a breach ahead of time, which often coincides with doing good work in general. For instance, don't lie to your customers on a regular basis, treat your employees respectfully, and – regarding your example – write closed source software as if it was open source the whole time. It's not as if attackers need the source code to fuzz your software for vulnerabilities. On a principled basis, I really dislike the world view where the employees have to be constantly prevented from getting the better of the company. If you don't trust me enough to surf on news sites during my time off at work, you should not trust me with software development, where laziness has often far worse consequences than not doing any work at all.

blackflame7000 6y ago
The problem is that not all warning signs rise to a fireable offense and in todays sue happy climate even at will employment has restrictions that protect workers rights
dx034 6y ago
These protections never really work against people who really want to get data out. Worst case you could just take pictures of your screen and read text back via OCR. But most employees would never know how to do this and even if, the threshold is high to go to such lengths. Most companies primarily want to prevent users from sending out data by mistake or via malware, since these are probably >99% of the reasons for data loss. I also dislike companies restricting employees. But I also know people from our IT department and the incidents they have to fight on a daily basis. If you don't restrict your network and company computers, you'll very quickly end up with malware, randsomware, leaked data etc.
- Perseids 6y ago
  I think we're mostly in agreement. The original scenario HenryBemis painted involved source code being leaked, so I think it's fair to either assume the employee is technically competent, or should not have access to it in the first place. Also, their scenario involved disgruntled employees, so on the other end of the spectrum, if you have, say, sales representatives which want to take out their customer database, then it's well in their motivation spectrum to snap a few hundred smartphone pictures of Excel or Outlook with a pdf "scanning" app to get a nicely printable address book. Sure, it's not perfect, but it can still be damaging as hell. Basically: Don't rely on data exfiltration to fail. But the reason I've bothered to write the first comment, is that it's such a huge productivity drain to develop software on a locked down machine. I'll think twice or thrice before taking on a position where I don't have root access to my computer. I concur most non-technical employees don't need (or should have) more than the equivalent of a Chromebook.

blackflame7000 6y ago

The problem is that not all warning signs rise to a fireable offense and in todays sue happy climate even at will employment has restrictions that protect workers rights

dx034 6y ago

These protections never really work against people who really want to get data out. Worst case you could just take pictures of your screen and read text back via OCR. But most employees would never know how to do this and even if, the threshold is high to go to such lengths. Most companies primarily want to prevent users from sending out data by mistake or via malware, since these are probably >99% of the reasons for data loss. I also dislike companies restricting employees. But I also know people from our IT department and the incidents they have to fight on a daily basis. If you don't restrict your network and company computers, you'll very quickly end up with malware, randsomware, leaked data etc.

Perseids 6y ago
I think we're mostly in agreement. The original scenario HenryBemis painted involved source code being leaked, so I think it's fair to either assume the employee is technically competent, or should not have access to it in the first place. Also, their scenario involved disgruntled employees, so on the other end of the spectrum, if you have, say, sales representatives which want to take out their customer database, then it's well in their motivation spectrum to snap a few hundred smartphone pictures of Excel or Outlook with a pdf "scanning" app to get a nicely printable address book. Sure, it's not perfect, but it can still be damaging as hell. Basically: Don't rely on data exfiltration to fail. But the reason I've bothered to write the first comment, is that it's such a huge productivity drain to develop software on a locked down machine. I'll think twice or thrice before taking on a position where I don't have root access to my computer. I concur most non-technical employees don't need (or should have) more than the equivalent of a Chromebook.