IT Tales

Here is a collection of a few fails by our IT Department.

PC shutdown & Usage Monitoring

Even though we work from home, we still have some PC’s in our office that we remote onto. There’s certain systems that only seem to work when on the physical network so people often call this a “jump box”. Our IT was planning on temporarily moving our PCs whilst some electric work was being done in the office. I was invited into a Teams chat which was supposed to be for everyone affected. After skimming the list, I spotted 3 people that were missing, and other colleagues spotted others. 9 people were missing in total! How do they not know who owns the PCs? They have been citing “increased security” in recent times. Surely a security risk if they don’t know who uses PCs on the network.

More recently, I was contacted again via email asking “if you use this PC”. Again, why do they need to ask if we use them? Isn’t that a security concern if not? Surely they know, especially when they have installed extra network security tools recently. I thought they had said software monitors network traffic and alerts for anything suspicious.

Upgrading Software

I was contacted by IT saying my SQL Server version was no longer supported by Microsoft, so I need to urgently upgrade it by the end of the week due to being considered insecure. They said if I want an installer, please reply. I thought it would be easy enough locating the installer, but it seems Microsoft’s SQL Server pages are very confusing. So I replied asking for the installer. They ignore me. I reply again, they ignore me. Months have gone by. So not that urgent then.

IT then announced that they are taking increased security measures and are removing all admin rights from our PC’s. Now we can only install software with their permission. They also said it makes sure we can’t install unlicensed software, since it is easy for someone to install software that is free for personal use, but is paid software for commercial use, and then the business can be liable.

A week later, they then email us saying there is a known security vulnerability with our Visual Studio version so we need to update it. We can’t though, we need admin rights to keep our software updated and secure! So now we have to log tickets, then they remote on and type in the admin password to proceed. I bet they love that.

In a similar fashion, they are more fussy with USB devices. They sent one of my colleagues a new laptop but it rejects his smart-card reader which he needs for testing. Can’t be plugging in USB devices these days.

Saving Money

They also said they wanted to be more stringent when it comes to licence keys, as we seem notorious for purchasing more licence keys than we need, then we might stop using software then still pay. I was contacted in early July 2022, saying that I have had a Jira licence for the last year but have not being using it:

We currently purchase a licence for you to access Jira. We understand a lot of the users will have now migrated to Azure DevOps and as such, your access may no longer be required.

May I kindly ask you to respond to this email by 12pm Friday 8th July confirming whether or not you continue to require access?

IT Email

So I reply saying I wasn’t using it and I don’t think I have used it for 2 years. I then got contacted again in February 2023 saying the same thing. I confirm that I don’t need it. I then got contacted earlier this month asking me again. So I’ve had a licence for 3 years now for a product I don’t use at all.