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!

  • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    They are so heavy on security I have a Citrix environment that takes me 3 logins

    My daily routine:

    1. Take laptop out of locked shelf
    2. Start Laptop and enter boot password
    3. Enter Bitlocker password
    4. Enter username (not saved) and password
    5. Open Citrix website and login with different username and password
    6. Enter MFA token to access said website
    7. Start server connection
    8. Enter different username/password (not saved) to access server
    9. Enter different MFA token for the server login
    10. 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.

    • viking@infosec.pubEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      And then they wonder that people resort to easily predictable patterns such as !1Qaz@2Wsx#3Edc and simply shift it one position to the right with every forced change and repeat at the end of the keyboard.

      • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        Some users have a barcode scanner connected to the system for doing the business stuff. The barcode scanner registers as HID keyboad …

        Yes, they did exactly what you think.

    • databender@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      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.