Kate Harris wrote: > Hi all, > > having come into a relatively established small company a little while > ago there were a number of big ticket things that needed to be done > which took up most of my concentration for the first few months. Now > they're done, the tidying up of the corporate systems and facilities > is beginning. And this is where I'm hitting a problem; wise-assed > users and a problem with lots of personal files being stored on > company laptops (I don't just mean a letter to the local council; I'm > talking GBs of iTunes, movies, photos etc.) along with a culture that > people treat company laptops as if they were their own. While I see > no problem with a little reasonable personal use, 40Gb of movies on a > laptop including the odd little trojan on "funny" video clips is > causing problems for my desktop staff when they're supporting users > (especially when said users expect/demand that all of their personal > stuff to be copied onto any new machine they get during rebuilds). > > Obviously I need to have a chat with HR and legal about this before > kicking off communications to the whole company along the lines of > "stop taking the mickey, people", but having never done this kind of > thing before (I'm a pointy-end operations person by experience, not > corporate IT which came as an added bonus in this job) I'm not sure > how to go about the whole culture change on use of laptops. My gut > feeling is to go in hard and say "stop it or we'll delete it all for > you", but I know that's not going to win hearts and minds. The other > thing is that whichever tack I take on this, there are a good few > users will argue and poke holes and try to find ways to circumvent > whatever is mandated/requested. There is something in the AUP, but it > is quite permissive "Employees are responsible for exercising good > judgment regarding the reasonableness of personal use.". > > Anyone here have any advice to offer on good ways to get the ball > rolling without causing a riot amongst my users? > > > K > This is where a talk with HR and legal is *definitely* appropriate, as they can set the kinds of policies that you need to fix the problem.
At $WORK, it's a simple policy that states that no copyrighted material or software not licenced by $WORK is to be put onto company computers (servers/desktops/laptops). This includes software and materials for which the individual may have purchased personally. The reasoning - $WORK can get into serious legal problems with the licence and copyright holders, which can result in expensive lawsuits. You then use the corporate legal policy to create an IT policy that 'conforms', i.e., personal data will not be tolerated (or backed up and restored) on company laptops. You'll still get the occasional laptop with pictures from the employees' digital camera, and personal documents and letters, but the bulk of the junk will now be fair game for removal, and you can then reset expectations for other personal data stored on the machine by including a policy that the company is not responsible for such data on laptops, and standard service measures may cause it to be deleted. It helps if you also provide good backup mechanisms for the data that really should be on the machines, and service policies that ensure that this data gets restored when necessary. Indicating that the backup space is a scarce resource that costs the company money, and therefore not an appropriate place to back up the contents of one's digital camera can further reduce the size of your problem. - Richard _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
