3 ms·
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 vi
by 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 agoI 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.