• Due to ongoing issues caused by Search, it has been temporarily disabled
  • Please excuse the mess, we're moving the furniture and restructuring the forum categories

[Continuation] Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 11

Darat said:
Plus you will find that most people don't want a second phone, even just for work purposes. Seen this time and time again, a company wanting staff to have work apps/data available on their phone but people want it on their personal phones. Personally, I would rather have a company supplied second phone BUT my views are out of step with most folk.
Click to expand...
Yeah. I don't want a work phone and more importantly I don't need one. It seems stupid to give me one just so that it can run Cisco DUO. I would literally have no other use for it.

It's easy to install the app on a personal phone, costs nothing, takes no resources, and almost everybody already has one. Who would ever consider doing otherwise?
 
catsmate said:
Norman Alexander said:
I insisted on a second, company-financed phone if they wanted me to work that way. Stuffed if they were going to have access to my personal handset for any reason.
Click to expand...
Absolutely.
Click to expand...
Like I said, I have literally no other use for a mobile phone in my job. I don't need to get work emails on a mobile device, I don't need to make or receive work-related phone calls on a mobile device - I don't have a use for it.

I just recalled that I actually did get a work mobile during the period when everybody was required to work from home at least some of the time. I literally never even charged it. It sat unused for most of 2020. Complete waste of money.

People with an actual requirement to use a mobile device for work purposes can get one. Not all staff have that requirement. In fact, most don't.
 
novaphile said:
Wow, that seems like a low number.

IIRC there were 35,000 employees at Centrelink alone (back when I was there).

SA Police has around 5,000 employees.
Click to expand...
We're not the biggest of departments. Actually two major departments and a host of minor agencies. Defence, Finance, even I believe Infrastructure are larger. It would be even more of a waste of money to give all of them mobile phones.

Also, it should be stated that all government devices are now required to run at Security Clearance Protected. This means, among other things, that all devices capable of accessing government data require a VPN. While the overhead for this isn't huge, it's also not insignificant when you scale it up to thousands of devices.

No, nobody's issuing work mobiles for the sole purpose of running MFA. If you already have a work mobile, yes absolutely you should install the MFA on it. Here's how. But everybody else can put it on their personal device.
 
arthwollipot said:
We're not the biggest of departments. Actually two major departments and a host of minor agencies. Defence, Finance, even I believe Infrastructure are larger. It would be even more of a waste of money to give all of them mobile phones.

Also, it should be stated that all government devices are now required to run at Security Clearance Protected. This means, among other things, that all devices capable of accessing government data require a VPN. While the overhead for this isn't huge, it's also not insignificant when you scale it up to thousands of devices.

No, nobody's issuing work mobiles for the sole purpose of running MFA. If you already have a work mobile, yes absolutely you should install the MFA on it. Here's how. But everybody else can put it on their personal device.
Click to expand...

The one to watch out for, is when the employer wants the right to hard wipe your phone, remotely, at any time they choose.
 
I really want to stop allowing people to log jobs with us by email. Here is the entire content of one job I've been assigned:

Short Description: my cisco jabber phone is not working I can make calls but not receive calls

Description: cisco jabber phone not working I can make calls but not receive calls
Click to expand...

giphy.gif
 
JoeMorgue said:
I cut the difference. I get a 50 buck a month cell phone stipend (which would be enough to get a second line / phone if I wanted) and I just use Google Voice to get a second virtual phone number. I can even set it so it goes automatically to voice mail when I'm off and not on call.
Click to expand...
That's not the problem.

Our company reserves the right to wipe your phone remotely at any time to enforce security, perform updates, remove questionable content, etc.

So they can do that any time they like with my company phone. ****** if they will be allowed do it to my personal phone.
 
Norman Alexander said:
That's not the problem.

Our company reserves the right to wipe your phone remotely at any time to enforce security, perform updates, remove questionable content, etc.

So they can do that any time they like with my company phone. ****** if they will be allowed do it to my personal phone.
Click to expand...

If it is the usual on the Android or iPhone platform, they can only administrate certain things, in other words they can remotely remove company apps, documents on cloud storage and so on. They can't reset the entire phone.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Who was it who had the "there's a bird in the stairwell" ticket? I think that one set the bar to a new high.
Click to expand...

Not quite a technical support call, but when I was a director at a software publisher I had a team in a property in the New Forest, I was called one morning because there were wild pigs in the kitchen/staff recreation room. Someone had left the external door open and the pigs must have smelled the food so wandered in. The pigs probably had better manners and hygiene than most of the team.

What I was meant to do being in London and about 2 1/2 hours away I don't know. We also had an issue when animal rights activists "freed" minks from fur farms and we ended up with over 20 minks taking residence.
 
Darat said:
Not quite a technical support call, but when I was a director at a software publisher I had a team in a property in the New Forest, I was called one morning because there were wild pigs in the kitchen/staff recreation room. Someone had left the external door open and the pigs must have smelled the food so wandered in. The pigs probably had better manners and hygiene than most of the team.

What I was meant to do being in London and about 2 1/2 hours away I don't know. We also had an issue when animal rights activists "freed" minks from fur farms and we ended up with over 20 minks taking residence.
Click to expand...

I can see how both fit under tech support: the first is bacon bits and the second is minks pointed to the wrong address.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Who was it who had the "there's a bird in the stairwell" ticket? I think that one set the bar to a new high.
Click to expand...

Never in a ticket (I think my most outside context ticket was "The light poles in the parking lot aren't turning on at the right time") but as a drive-by, oh by the way I'm basically the building's designated bug killer and have had to wrangle two small snakes out of the building.

But that's more a case of being in a building full of 95% 55-75 year old women who all either have brittle bone disease or can't see their own feet and being "adult male who's body is still functional" so obviously I'm just the person who's expected to do anything more strenuous the picking up a piece of paper. On the desk I mean, not one that's dropped on the floor that's too strenuous.
 
Darat said:
If it is the usual on the Android or iPhone platform, they can only administrate certain things, in other words they can remotely remove company apps, documents on cloud storage and so on. They can't reset the entire phone.
Click to expand...
Yeah, they can. It's part of the overall phone management platform needed in hospitals. It's required if a handset is lost/stolen/given away. Patient data may be on the handset. So it gets wiped - factory reset.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Yeah, they can. It's part of the overall phone management platform needed in hospitals. It's required if a handset is lost/stolen/given away. Patient data may be on the handset. So it gets wiped - factory reset.
Click to expand...

Are you sure for giving away, selling the phone, leaving the company? If so then the phones are not set up correctly. That should only require the work profile to be deleted, which will delete all the work apps and all the data from company accounts such as company emails etc.

I would be very surprised to hear people leaving the company allow all their personal data to be deleted.
 
I think that the partitioning for Android phones is relatively recent, before that any corporate software potentially had full rein over your device, especially paired with the vague permissions that people just clicked through.

A lot of this also rests on peoples trust of the IT department, and frankly, the IT
department themselves
 
Mongrel said:
I think that the partitioning for Android phones is relatively recent, before that any corporate software potentially had full rein over your device, especially paired with the vague permissions that people just clicked through.

A lot of this also rests on peoples trust of the IT department, and frankly, the IT
department themselves
Click to expand...

It surprises me that IT departments would think allowing personal phones to connect to their internal systems was a good idea.
 
zooterkin said:
It surprises me that IT departments would think allowing personal phones to connect to their internal systems was a good idea.
Click to expand...

Starts at the top - the MD doesn't want to be juggling two phones. IT departments may well think it's a bad idea but it's the norm now.
 
Darat said:
Are you sure for giving away, selling the phone, leaving the company? If so then the phones are not set up correctly. That should only require the work profile to be deleted, which will delete all the work apps and all the data from company accounts such as company emails etc.
Click to expand...
Nope. They do a FULL phone factory reset - back to out-of-the-box status. It's literally part of the deal to allow any phone to be used for our hospital purposes. They are serious about data security in our children's hospital. Imagine what some pervert could do with medical photos if a child is identifiable.

You can use your own handset, sure, and have your personal contact details in the hospital phone directory, etc. But it also gets entered in the corporate handset management system and subject to corporate rules: Where a managed handset is deemed to be leaving patient data at risk, it can be factory reset remotely.

I would be very surprised to hear people leaving the company allow all their personal data to be deleted.
Click to expand...
It's quite true. That's why I asked for a separate corporate phone for work purposes, one they can wipe at any time. My own phone is not used for work at all, another part of the corporate rules.
 
Is a factory reset as big a deal as it used to be with the availability of cloud backup and storage? Granted, it probably depends upon the provider, but I recall the last time I upgraded my phone that getting the new phone set up with most of what I had on my old phone was fairly painless. Wouldn't most smartphones if reset just download the last backup almost as soon as it restarted?

Yes, I would be upset if someone factory reset my phone remotely, but I don't think it would take me long to get back all my personal information and settings.
 
Last edited:
rdaneel said:
Is a factory reset as big a deal as it used to be with the availability of cloud backup and storage?
Click to expand...

I talked about this is another thread a while back.

I decided to make a backup plan for my home PC/Devices and quickly realized I didn't have that much to backup.

I can reinstall Windows/Android/Linux and/or hard reset all my devices in my sleep at this point and almost all my data; Steam Games, Music, Kindle Books is already on the cloud with no functional way of me doing a "backup" on any of it outside of it's already cloud based nature.

A small Google Drive for my personal documents and some PC settings is all I really need for "backup" these days.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I talked about this is another thread a while back.

I decided to make a backup plan for my home PC/Devices and quickly realized I didn't have that much to backup.

I can reinstall Windows/Android/Linux and/or hard reset all my devices in my sleep at this point and almost all my data; Steam Games, Music, Kindle Books is already on the cloud with no functional way of me doing a "backup" on any of it outside of it's already cloud based nature.

A small Google Drive for my personal documents and some PC settings is all I really need for "backup" these days.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I had the same experience with a new PC I bought about six months ago.
"My Computer" basically just lives on OneDrive and it almost doesn't matter what PC I attach to it.
 
Ya, I have OneDrive for my Office 365 documents, Google Drive for some of my other projects. I also use a separate SSD as an application drive.
 
rdaneel said:
Yeah, I had the same experience with a new PC I bought about six months ago.
"My Computer" basically just lives on OneDrive and it almost doesn't matter what PC I attach to it.
Click to expand...
A data security situation pointed out to our IT policy wonks in HQ...and they sat there like stunned mullets. They just realised that sensitive patient data could conceivably and easily be uploaded to public cloud storage from company phones, perhaps more easily than using totally unsecure USB sticks (which they wrote silly policy for and everyone ignores). It's a cavalcade of clowns sometimes...
 
arthwollipot said:
Yeah. I don't want a work phone and more importantly I don't need one. It seems stupid to give me one just so that it can run Cisco DUO. I would literally have no other use for it.

It's easy to install the app on a personal phone, costs nothing, takes no resources, and almost everybody already has one. Who would ever consider doing otherwise?
Click to expand...

I have a work phone, it's in my desk. Or was. I have no idea where my desk is.

I had already given up using the work brick and asked them to call my own mobile. Since covid we've had to use Duo, which wouldn't have run on the brick any way. Not entered into any arguments about compensation
 
zooterkin said:
It surprises me that IT departments would think allowing personal phones to connect to their internal systems was a good idea.
Click to expand...
Sensible ones don't. But that may be over-ridden by idiot managers and bean counters.
 
catsmate said:
Sensible ones don't. But that may be over-ridden by idiot managers and bean counters.
Click to expand...

Normally not the managers.

Wudang said:
Back in the day a certain financial institution with which I am familiar had a strictly managed company owned Blackberry rule. Until senior execs started using iPhones.
Click to expand...

Yep it's the senior bods that usually sets the ball rolling.
 
catsmate said:
zooterkin said:
It surprises me that IT departments would think allowing personal phones to connect to their internal systems was a good idea.
Click to expand...
Sensible ones don't. But that may be over-ridden by idiot managers and bean counters.
Click to expand...
Or senior surgeons in major hospitals... Strangely, these people have considerable influence in hospital Board meetings. ;) What they want, they usually get. And ours wanted to use their (latest-model, titanium-isotope frame, nuclear-powered) personal iPhones on our corporate network. This, after demanding to be able use USB's to take patient data to their consulting rooms...and losing them.

They have been a nightmare for patient data security sometimes...
 
Norman Alexander said:
Or senior surgeons in major hospitals... Strangely, these people have considerable influence in hospital Board meetings. ;) What they want, they usually get. And ours wanted to use their (latest-model, titanium-isotope frame, nuclear-powered) personal iPhones on our corporate network. This, after demanding to be able use USB's to take patient data to their consulting rooms...and losing them.

They have been a nightmare for patient data security sometimes...
Click to expand...
I favour drawing up a quitable worded legal disclaimer, dumping all responsibility and costs on them, and requiring it to be signed and witnessed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom