Anon witnesses excellent security
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this is supposed to be more secure because it costs money
It makes blaming someone really easy though and that's all that matters in a corporate world.
The greentext reminds me of this FAQ entry: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-vendor
A.9.17 As one of our existing software vendors, can you just fill in this questionnaire for us?
We periodically receive requests like this, from organisations which have apparently sent out a form letter to everyone listed in their big spreadsheet of ‘software vendors’ requiring them all to answer some long list of questions […]
We don't make a habit of responding in full to these questionnaires, because we are not a software vendor.
A software vendor is a company to which you are paying lots of money in return for some software. They know who you are, and they know you're paying them money; so they have an incentive to fill in your forms and questionnaires [...] because they want to keep being paid.
[...]
If you work for an organisation which you think might be at risk of making this mistake, we urge you to reorganise your list of software suppliers so that it clearly distinguishes paid vendors who know about you from free software developers who don't have any idea who you are. Then, only send out these mass mailings to the former.
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Anon works for my company? Because they did exactly this with the same excuse.
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this is supposed to be more secure because it costs money
It makes blaming someone really easy though and that's all that matters in a corporate world.
Would be really funny if they still get fucked over because of some fine print in the disclaimer
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this is supposed to be more secure because it costs money
It makes blaming someone really easy though and that's all that matters in a corporate world.
This is legitimately it. The same reason corporations often pay for Linux (e.g. RHEL)—the people in charge want to be able to pick up a phone and harass someone until they fix their problem. They simply can't fathom any alternative approach to managing dependencies.
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Anon works for my company? Because they did exactly this with the same excuse.
wrote last edited by [email protected]how thoroughly was it followed through? how was ensured that no free beer software was used?
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Yeesh. I would find a new job immediately. Absolutely unhinged behavior.
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Funny, if one shares a screenshot of a 4chan post that says the word 'retard', it gets upvoted, but if you post a comment that says Google AI is retarded, you get downvoted into oblivion.
I'll never fully understand the modern internet, seems like double standards to me.
That's some cool kind of psychosis you got there champ
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This is legitimately it. The same reason corporations often pay for Linux (e.g. RHEL)—the people in charge want to be able to pick up a phone and harass someone until they fix their problem. They simply can't fathom any alternative approach to managing dependencies.
Not just pick up the phone and harass someone but to also have someone to press a lawsuit against if things go really wrong. With free software the liability typically ends at the user which means all they can do is fire the employee and eat the loss. Suppose now corporate paid for it, well now there is a contract and a party that can be sued.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
My previous employer was bought by a huge company. I liked it in the small company, because I had freedom to do what was needed without much questions, and I was trusted to make the relevant decisions and purchases. Kind of a "Costs be damned, get it done in a reasonable amount of time" kind of arrangement.
When we came under the big corpo, we got an email instructing us to list all the software we used/needed, so that it could be added to the whitelist that big corpo worked with. Anything not in the whitelist simply couldn't run.
I gave them the list, but spoke to my on-shore It guy that out in the field we often needed to install something that we didn't need before on short notice, and waiting for a ticket to be resolved for an administrative matter had the potential to stop production.
They found it easier just to make an exception for my work PC. I just had to promise not to VPN in to the office while running "weird" stuff, otherwise the higher ups would get upset.
That's fine. I had my own VPN for only the stuff I needed anyway. I VPNed into offshore production systems on a daily basis. I needed to VPN I to the office once or twice. Plus in my book, the "main" VPN client is what I consider weird software. My shit was basically a wrapper around openvpn.
EDIT: To be fair, the huge corpo employer wasn't unreasonable. It was just so large with so many employees that strct security implementations were needed for IT to have some sort of control. I was technically also IT, but I only dealt with field equipment, so that IT could focus on "normal" stuff. They trusted me to handle my end, they handled theirs, and we usually cooperated fairly well when our systems "met".
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Would be really funny if they still get fucked over because of some fine print in the disclaimer
Or maybe the vendor goes with "take the money and run".
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“If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product.”
The phrase has its uses, but shit like this is what happens when it's taken to the extreme.
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Oh my god. My colleagues were making fun of postgres users. They didn't bother doing a Google search.
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It's "more secure" because there's a specific company to blame when it goes wrong.
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It's "more secure" because there's a specific company to blame when it goes wrong.
Security through liability
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It's "more secure" because there's a specific company to blame when it goes wrong.
Yeah, i worked briefly at multinational japanese motor company and this was their logic. I was hired as a software developer contractor and HQ had rules stating, no open source software, no free software and the one that puzzled me the most no in house executables (WHY THE FUCK DID THEY HIRE ME?)
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Not just pick up the phone and harass someone but to also have someone to press a lawsuit against if things go really wrong. With free software the liability typically ends at the user which means all they can do is fire the employee and eat the loss. Suppose now corporate paid for it, well now there is a contract and a party that can be sued.
As if the Eulas don’t make it all arbitration?
What software company allows liability for mistakes in a EULA?
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My previous employer was bought by a huge company. I liked it in the small company, because I had freedom to do what was needed without much questions, and I was trusted to make the relevant decisions and purchases. Kind of a "Costs be damned, get it done in a reasonable amount of time" kind of arrangement.
When we came under the big corpo, we got an email instructing us to list all the software we used/needed, so that it could be added to the whitelist that big corpo worked with. Anything not in the whitelist simply couldn't run.
I gave them the list, but spoke to my on-shore It guy that out in the field we often needed to install something that we didn't need before on short notice, and waiting for a ticket to be resolved for an administrative matter had the potential to stop production.
They found it easier just to make an exception for my work PC. I just had to promise not to VPN in to the office while running "weird" stuff, otherwise the higher ups would get upset.
That's fine. I had my own VPN for only the stuff I needed anyway. I VPNed into offshore production systems on a daily basis. I needed to VPN I to the office once or twice. Plus in my book, the "main" VPN client is what I consider weird software. My shit was basically a wrapper around openvpn.
EDIT: To be fair, the huge corpo employer wasn't unreasonable. It was just so large with so many employees that strct security implementations were needed for IT to have some sort of control. I was technically also IT, but I only dealt with field equipment, so that IT could focus on "normal" stuff. They trusted me to handle my end, they handled theirs, and we usually cooperated fairly well when our systems "met".
"we need this NOW"
> Package I install is immediately black listed by IT, I submit a high priority ticket and I don't hear from them for days, maybe weeks
Like what the fuck can I do
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I am becoming increasingly more appreciative of the fact that I have root access to "my" company provided work device.
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how thoroughly was it followed through? how was ensured that no free beer software was used?
That's a great question. In my experience (15 years at MSPs and several years as a freelance consultant where I'm mostly in house one place but take side jobs) I've been the one who had to make this change.
Some companies are very serious about it. Laptops end up on some device management solution that can tell every program you've got installed and flag anything not pre-approved. Then take away everyone's ability to install outside of device management.
Some companies want to scare the users into compliance but want IT to be able to do their own thing. So they'll install some easily bypassed thing or enroll everyone but not keep an eye on their network to find rogue devices.
Some companies threaten it, pay money for a consultant to put together a plan, don't like the price, threaten to go elsewhere, and the exec who championed it finds a new job while nothing of note was done, but they're sitting on a handful of licenses for software no one is using.
I used to carry a toolkit of free software in portable format on a thumb drive and another thumb drive with a full Linux environment in case I had to do something at the first kind of company.
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"we need this NOW"
> Package I install is immediately black listed by IT, I submit a high priority ticket and I don't hear from them for days, maybe weeks
Like what the fuck can I do
wrote last edited by [email protected]"Yes, but does one of the existing whitelisted executables fulfill the same function?"
