After self hosting several services for a few users, with SSO, backups, hardware issues etc, I really appreciate how good the IT was in my old company. Everything was connected, smooth, slick and you could tell it was secure. I had very few issues and when I did, they were quickly solved. Doing this all at scale for thousands of employees spread across the world, it is a wonderful sight to see.
Now at my current company, it’s at the opposite end of the scale where I almost believe that I could do a better job by myself! They’ve trying to do everything you would expect but somehow doing it wrong. They are so heavy on security I have a Citrix environment that takes me 3 logins to get to, fails constantly and means I can’t work without internet (like on a long train journey for work purposes recently), and on the other hand they’ve only just turned off admin rights for users so we could’ve installed anything we wanted!!! All our attachments (incoming and outgoing) are saved to a secure website (like OneDrive) and replaced with a link. It doesn’t save the file names on the email so it’s really tricky to find old emails if it’s a document you’re looking for. I could go on but just venting at this point as it’s so frustrating!!!
Thank you to the good IT people out there. Your roles are so important but not appreciated enough!
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They are so heavy on security I have a Citrix environment that takes me 3 logins
My daily routine:
- Take laptop out of locked shelf
- Start Laptop and enter boot password
- Enter Bitlocker password
- Enter username (not saved) and password
- Open Citrix website and login with different username and password
- Enter MFA token to access said website
- Start server connection
- Enter different username/password (not saved) to access server
- Enter different MFA token for the server login
- Start the business-specific application with 3rd set of not saved and different login data
They also have plans to make MFA mandatory for laptop login, too.
Passwords need to be at least 15 characters long for laptops and 30 for servers and 10 for the business-specific application. All need to have uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters and need to be changed every 60 days (for the server login) and cannot be the last 30 passwords.
This insane torture is why there are post-it notes under the keyboards.
This is very close to my workplace but we have about 17 domains to work across, with a separate account for each. It’s frustrating sometimes, but in the end I get paid the same either way.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!
My advice for this company: fire 2/3 of all IT staff (including managers). Then tell the remaining ones to cut off unneccessary things and do it better in the future.
Big international corporate, IT security hired by personal connections instead of skill, IT security never worked in daily business.
The fun thing is, that they refer to NIST guidelines. Which is even funnier because NIST says 12 digits are enough, user-generated 8 digits are fine, no complexity rules, and password changes only “when necessary” (i.e. security breaches).
This sounds like my old place, but much worse.
We used to have laptops we had to lock in a cabinet (yeah, one of those cabinets with a really puny lock that’s easy to pick). And we had to log into n old mainframe system that had numerous environment instances which each required a unique password that had to be changed every 90 days.
We (the software devs) basically rebelled on the laptop situation and insisted they find a better solution. Thankfully they changed policy and of allowed the laptops to be locked into our docking stations, which in turn were locked to our desks.
As for the mainframe system credential management, I tried using a standard third party password manager, but a) it wasn’t a good fit for the credentials, and b) the sys admins or security team forcibly uninstalled it because it wasn’t sanctioned software (even though it was a well-respected and actively maintained one). And our security group refused to go out and find one.
So being a dev, I wrote my own desktop password manager for the mainframe credentials. It was decently secure, but nowhere near as secure as a retail password manager. But it fit the quirks of the mainframe credentials requirements. And after my colleagues and manager did a code review of it, it was considered internal software, and thus fit for use.
As I was leaving they were in the process of removing all our local admin rights (without a clear path on how to accommodate for us developers debugging code - fun times ahead!).
But all of those annoyances pale in comparison to the shit you are having to deal with! Holy hell, that sounds like pure misery! I’m sorry.
Temporary workaround applications/scripts become de-facto standards sounds familiar. They disabled loading script files in Powershell but you can still copy&paste the file’s content …
People have no idea how absurd IT in corporations is.
Yubi keys… for all logins, would solve this mess, geez.
And I guarantee every one of those passwords are written on a piece of paper at the desk under the keyboard.
Most IT departments have the mindset of avoiding troubles instead of making things easy for users. They don’t want to get blamed for security incidents. They want things to be predictable and within control.
They sacrifice a lot of user convenience doing that. On the other hand, IT giants are enshittificating IT services.
how do you think IT giants are enshittifying their services?
I am a former IT Desktop drone…er…support worker… I used to swap towers for my local municipality back when Windows XP was being replaced with 7. I saw passwords on post-its attached to the monitor, mouse pad, and even under the keyboard or keyboard drawer (I had to get under desks to do the swap). Our policy was to remove those whenever we saw them and trash them in a different can across the building or a different one. They have a standard 90 day password cycle and most people couldn’t handle that. I would answer the phone often to 'unlock" their account after 3 attempts. My all time favorite when I would help an end user with software was when I would encounter someone’s “God Mode” icon for some of the registry hacks that used to float around. Everyone had Admin privileges (ironically), so it wasn’t really needed anyway.
Their primary server admins and IT folks in the main office were Top notch though. Never any downtime and the main security guy was very strong in making sure everything was adhered to. We, as desktop support didn’t have the master password to decrypt a laptop which was GPG protected and had to bring it to him if we had a user which locked themselves out. With great consternation, only a few machines would be allowed to XP and those were VLAN’d and isolated from the outside world.
The rest of the server admins handled everything with ease seemingly. The fun part was when they had a third party come in and do a security audit. No problems on the server side, but it wasn’t a success. They did the 'ol drop a flash drive randomly in different locations test. Knowing human nature, they knew someone would pick it up, plug it in and be baited with an excel file which looked like it had financials. Unbeknownst to the user, it sent a ping to their reporting server and the drive ID. Which was later reported back. They also did physical security penetration tests - walk in behind you type of thing. I remember seeing a group of guys non company ID badges try to follow me into the main IT office. I stopped them and asked who they were and what they wanted (this was a Govt building), and the look of confusion mixed with satisfaction from them that I stopped them was priceless. I let the head IT guy know who was at the door and left it up to them to unlock it for them.
I now work in a help desk position for a software company and miss those days of desktop support. But, I know for a fact that I.T. Guys an Gals don’t get enough recognition. They are the understated backbone of a company’s well-being especially when holidays and weekends are prime time for systems to fail and they are practically on call no matter what.
Compliance and money. Probably has little to do with the team itself and more about the business needs.
