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Hi there,

So we have a small company of 30ish and one of them is a young java programer who loves to tinker with Linux all day on his personal laptop. I just stopped by his desk and found his laptop connected to my network with a switch that he brought in.

Am I wrong to be bothered by this?

I’m thinking it would be best to ban personal devices from the company network.

Mark

11 Spice ups
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What does your company’s Acceptable Use Policy state?

No. You are not wrong to be bothered by this.

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Kill his laptop MAC…

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Do we have access to a policy that states it’s not allowed? I’ve got the go ahead from the CEO.

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…and the switch.

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…or just the user.

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Sounds like you need to do a real security audit too,

I would talk to the dude first, explain the issue. Give him the chance to shut it down before you just kill it. (Then blacklist his MAC)

We get called dicks enough :slight_smile:

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What are you worried he might find on your company network?

Sounds like your company needs to implement a stronger IT policy stating what is and isn’t acceptable when it comes to BYOD. Then you should look into mobile device management solutions.

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From your words it seems he wasn’t hired to do any programming. If he’s not doing the job he’s hired for, that’s a company problem, small or big. And if he’s still doing it and you have to deal with that, that’s even a bigger problem.

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Personal laptop = no hardline access to company network. Even if someone had brought one to work and found a free port, the DHCP will not give an IP as the pool is static and MAC specific. I’m coming off as a little extreme perhaps but for a small network environment I don’t think this is unreasonable, especially if you are dealing with users like that (been there). At the end of the day he gets to go home and not give a crap. But if he f@cks something up, it’s you @ss…

So no, not wrong to be bothered by this and to encourage you I just made this in paint…

RayBan__1_.png

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I’m going to stick my 2 cents in here. No personal devices should ever be on the company network. You have no way of knowing what kind of malware, virus or other evil software is on his personal device. You need to put in place policies that put a stop to that practice.

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Policy now in place, Thanks for everyone’s advice.

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With only 30 users I can see how this can be awkward though. I hope the policy implementation went through without too much resentment.