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Companies are willing to pay more money to rent a computer from AWS than to send a computer to their employee, because of the risk the employee won't send it ba

Companies are willing to pay more money to rent a computer from AWS than to send a computer to their employee, because of the risk the employee won't send it back. It doesn't actually make economic sense but it tickles their sense of "fairness" that these workers shouldn't get any more than absolutely necessary.

nickff 3y ago
There are a number of advantages you get by deploying cloud computers instead of physical ones (like laptops), and most have nothing to do with fairness. The ability to control what gets installed on them gives you obvious security and performance advantages, as well as allowing you to quickly and easily 'service' the computers (restore them to working order by loading a known good image). Disallowing employees from downloading data to devices in their possession also reduces 'leaks' of sensitive corporate information due to carelessness. I've never heard of anyone making a 'fairness' argument about sending out laptops, though I wouldn't be surprised if someone somewhere has made it.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > The ability to control what gets installed on them gives you obvious security and performance advantage On my work machine (a normal Windows 10 laptop), the company has complete control over what gets installed. If I install something the company has forbidden, they notice, forcibly remove the software remotely, and then send someone to scold me.
  - wincy 3y ago
    Ah yeah that happened to me at my first professional job (i.e more than ten devs at the whole company) I needed my 802.11x keys transferred to a new laptop. So rather than ask, I just, you know, downloaded metasploit to rip the private auth keys with mimikatz so I’d be able to copy them! About ten seconds later my laptop mysteriously logged me out… It’s the only time in my career I’ve literally been yelled at. Somehow avoided getting fired. To make it worse they were doing red team pentesting that day so I totally looked like I was hacking the Gibson.
catchnear4321 3y ago
most companies send employees laptops with mdm, recorded serial numbers, etc. sure, an employee that decides to fafo with laptop theft is going to cause a hassle, but it should be much more of a hassle for the former employee. this has nothing to do with hardware, in fact that’s the point. this little cube is useless outside of a single use case. go ahead and take it, it’s just hardware, and will likely be no more than that once stolen.
IshKebab 3y ago
Nah, they don't care about that. In my experience it's more about ease of administration and data loss prevention.
dylan604 3y ago
I work in an industry where an extreme amount of effort is expended in ensuring the employees do not walk out with data. Effort is spent keeping production network separate from corporate network to the point that checking email is done through a remote connection. USB devices are filled with epoxy, and the USB drivers are removed from the OS. Putting everything in the cloud would be the next logical step in preventing all of the thiefs, er, employees from being able to remove data from the building. Now, just to convince all of the clients that their data is actually safer in the cloud than on-prem.
baz00 3y ago
It doesn't make sense at all. You can take screenshots of your shitty terminal with your phone. This is rent seeking dressed up in security paranoia.
- rbanffy 3y ago
  > You can take screenshots of your shitty terminal with your phone It'll still be hard to exfiltrate much that way, unless you record it as video and pack the data as pixels in an animation. You can pass a couple tens of millions of bits through an LCD screen and a camera, a lot more via MITM on HDMI.

nickff 3y ago

There are a number of advantages you get by deploying cloud computers instead of physical ones (like laptops), and most have nothing to do with fairness. The ability to control what gets installed on them gives you obvious security and performance advantages, as well as allowing you to quickly and easily 'service' the computers (restore them to working order by loading a known good image). Disallowing employees from downloading data to devices in their possession also reduces 'leaks' of sensitive corporate information due to carelessness. I've never heard of anyone making a 'fairness' argument about sending out laptops, though I wouldn't be surprised if someone somewhere has made it.

JohnFen 3y ago
> The ability to control what gets installed on them gives you obvious security and performance advantage On my work machine (a normal Windows 10 laptop), the company has complete control over what gets installed. If I install something the company has forbidden, they notice, forcibly remove the software remotely, and then send someone to scold me.
- wincy 3y ago
  Ah yeah that happened to me at my first professional job (i.e more than ten devs at the whole company) I needed my 802.11x keys transferred to a new laptop. So rather than ask, I just, you know, downloaded metasploit to rip the private auth keys with mimikatz so I’d be able to copy them! About ten seconds later my laptop mysteriously logged me out… It’s the only time in my career I’ve literally been yelled at. Somehow avoided getting fired. To make it worse they were doing red team pentesting that day so I totally looked like I was hacking the Gibson.

catchnear4321 3y ago

most companies send employees laptops with mdm, recorded serial numbers, etc. sure, an employee that decides to fafo with laptop theft is going to cause a hassle, but it should be much more of a hassle for the former employee. this has nothing to do with hardware, in fact that’s the point. this little cube is useless outside of a single use case. go ahead and take it, it’s just hardware, and will likely be no more than that once stolen.

IshKebab 3y ago

Nah, they don't care about that. In my experience it's more about ease of administration and data loss prevention.

dylan604 3y ago

I work in an industry where an extreme amount of effort is expended in ensuring the employees do not walk out with data. Effort is spent keeping production network separate from corporate network to the point that checking email is done through a remote connection. USB devices are filled with epoxy, and the USB drivers are removed from the OS. Putting everything in the cloud would be the next logical step in preventing all of the thiefs, er, employees from being able to remove data from the building. Now, just to convince all of the clients that their data is actually safer in the cloud than on-prem.

baz00 3y ago

It doesn't make sense at all. You can take screenshots of your shitty terminal with your phone. This is rent seeking dressed up in security paranoia.

rbanffy 3y ago
> You can take screenshots of your shitty terminal with your phone It'll still be hard to exfiltrate much that way, unless you record it as video and pack the data as pixels in an animation. You can pass a couple tens of millions of bits through an LCD screen and a camera, a lot more via MITM on HDMI.