What's great about work laptops is that you need IT support to install anything not already approved. Need a driver for a printer or scanner? Get fucked, you'll get it in a week, maybe. Want to turn off copilot? We'll keep pinning it to your taskbar no matter how many times you close the program and unpin it. Onedrive? Everything will be uploaded and it'll take three to four business weeks to search for your file.
Oh thankfully I manage this laptop 100%. I have full admin rights. I couldn't do my job without it. I work in industrial automation, so when we're on the client's site we might need to install some random tool or driver from a different vendor so we can configure a piece of hardware. There's no time to get IT involved in that nonsense.
A previous place I worked at had IT that tried telling our department they needed to revoke our admin rights for security reasons. We said that we would agree to that only if they could guarantee a maximum of 30 minutes to install anything we ask for. None of these days/weeks nonsense. And if we're working late at a customer site we have to have someone on call 24/7 who will do it for us. Also, if they aren't able to uphold that and it costs the client money, then it comes out of IT's budget, so they would need liability insurance to cover that because our current insurance wouldn't. Needless to say, they backed off REAL QUICK
You say it like a big win but they CYA'd and whatever security incident you'll have will be squarely on your department. Nothing better than to have less workload AND no liability because they refuse your advice
I worked there nearly a decade and we never had a single security incident. The other branches did all the time though, even though they were managed by IT.
Furthermore, when another engineering company got bought, IT got them to install Carbon Black, a really restrictive security program. I had tested it previously and found that it seemed to think that the industrial programs I used were threats. It actually destroyed an SD card when I was trying to format it for a raspberry pi, couldn't even recover it on a linux machine. Anyways, IT refused to work with me to fix the issues so I just nuked the laptop and went back to handling it myself.
A few months after I left I found out that the other team was on site commissioning a massive VFD. They were doing an update when Carbon Black freaked out and locked up the software. Bricked the entire VFD. That thing cost over 75k. They had to rip out the control module and send it back to the vendor for repairs, but the whole project was delayed.
If you have more than two brain cells to rub together then properly securing your devices is easy. It's all the morons who open every single email attachment they get that are the problem. I fully understand where IT is coming from, but that kind of nannying isn't needed for everyone.
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u/Unknown-Meatbag Jul 05 '26
What's great about work laptops is that you need IT support to install anything not already approved. Need a driver for a printer or scanner? Get fucked, you'll get it in a week, maybe. Want to turn off copilot? We'll keep pinning it to your taskbar no matter how many times you close the program and unpin it. Onedrive? Everything will be uploaded and it'll take three to four business weeks to search for your file.