We got an email this morning regarding the new Internet security procedures that will be put in place over the weekend here at work. This sent my boss, who has had a rough week, into SUPER SPAZ MODE. She barreled out of the office saying she had talked to the IT person yesterday about it and she was told the company is going to block every website and will turn websites back on as we need them for work-related tasks.
*deep breath* WHATEVER!
Obviously he was just yanking her chain. But she wouldn't listen to reason and started up this big paniced rant with a couple coworkers about 4 feet behind my chair and I really had to stop myself from laughing. She was talking about everyone from the company bringing their personal laptops to work and going to Starbucks or Panera on their lunch breaks to check email and whatnot. Rediculous!
She even wanted me to call down to IT and ask them the same thing she asked yesterday to see if I got the same response. First off, no. If you want to find out, you're a grown woman, you can do it yourself. Second, you honestly think the IT staff this company has is going to be here before 8? You've got to be kidding me. (This is in no way a jab at IT staff everywhere. I know IT works very hard. It's just at this place, they've given IT such a long leash 'cause they didn't know what to do with them that IT...I can't think of an appropriate metaphor. IT has had a lot of freedom, we'll just leave it at that.)
Of course they're not going to be doing that. My wife's cousin has been a good source of inside info and I've known about this for a couple weeks now. What they're doing is shutting down "non business-related" sites, according to the email. What that's going to mean, for they time being at least, is no more myspace, facebook, Amazon, ebay, etc. You get the idea.
This just in: we got an email forwarded to use from our Editorial Director and these are the types of sites being blocked on Monday:
Shopping
Adult / Mature Content
pr0n
Hacking
IM
Social Sites
Yes folks, you're seeing that right. The company currently does not block pr0n sites. Hopefully "social sites" doesn't include blogger, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
After seeing that email my boss still isn't convinced that they're not shutting down the whole Internet I really have to hold back the giggles.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Do you all use IM for business reasons?
I'm PMing a roll-out of MS Office Communicator server (an internal IM server). It can be federated with external MSN server/user ID but it's a lot more expensive, so we haven't done that yet.
We had to fight tooth and nail to protect the ability for other IM clients/connectivity to still be allowed on a department by department basis - and won. I use IM on all platforms for business reasons to stay in touch with project teams, contractors and vendors across the US - it would be a huge handicap if I lost it to an "internal only" system. And even worse if I lost it entirely. There are lots of others with the same requirements... it's not just social toy and productivity sink, in fact, my social use is perhaps less than 2% of my overall IM use.
I don't know about everyone in the company, but I don't use IM at all and I don't know of anyone in the department that uses IM for business or personal use.
Other people in other departments might, but I don't know. Any communication I have internally or externally is email or phone.
I'll make my post extra offensive on Monday to see if that effects your ability to look at it.
On the flipside, I'll make sure it's totally unsociable. :D
Jeri -- me too. I use IM for work a LOT. Especially with Linux Journal, since I work remotely.
We do have a dedicated Jabber server, but use whatever. We're all logged into several different IM servers.
We have an IM system with our current mail program (Groupwise) and I love it. It saves my phone from ringing fifty times a day with simple questions, and also allows my GAs to reach me without having to pick up the phone (because they're busy, because they're on the phone, because someone is scaring them.)
I still don't IM much socially.
In fact, it's pretty much only with you all and (rarely) my husband.
Ah, the ability of people to panic and perception rather than reality.
Urgh. Matt, the hospital that I work at has firewalled the network almost into uselessness. We are blocked daily from legitimate sites that we need for work. For awhile, even the University of Alaska.
When I worked at UA we used IM for work stuff all the time, and usually just used AIM. We had a deaf employee that IM really made the difference with being able to effectively communicate, since most of us aren't so great at ASL.
Well, this morning has been one big clusterfuck as far as Internet access goes.
The system change even stopped me from opening InDesign to work on an article. There was a font that was corrupted and because they took away administrator functionality from everyone I couldn't just go in and disable the font myself. I guess this has happened to maybe half the people using InDesign, including a couple designers for one of the company's other books that ships today.
So far the only casualty I've noticed is a web comic I can't get to any more because it's categorized under games. Apparently "games" is a forbidden topic now.
All the members of the UCF that I've been to this morning seem to be ok. *phew*
Post a Comment