1

I have a VP who brings his personal laptop to the office (not on our domain). His laptop really, really sucks! He is so concerned about people accessing his stuff that he goes crazy with anti-spyware & anti-virus software. Now because of his paranoia, his computer crawls and he always seems to have issues with it and it can be extremly stressful. What have most of you done when it comes to users like this? Do you have a policy on using your personal laptop in the office? There are times when I wish I could pull the plug on his access!

17 Spice ups
2

My experience on this issue is that the people who cause the most problems like these are the people who are in a position to ignore any policies the IT department would make anyhow. For example, at my last corporate job, we did prohibit people from bringing in outside equipment, but of course that policy did not apply to senior executives, top salespeople, or anyone else who has more political pull than us cash-suckers down in IT.

Just like everything else in life, you have to choose your battles carefully.

3

For the security of our network, no external laptops or systems of any kind are allowed, period. CEOs and whatnot get laptops from us they can use.

The policy is cut and dry and there are no exceptions.

4

Personal equipment is a security issue and a liability. It isn’t supported. If you make a change on a personal item and things get worse, the company is then held liable. Therefore, we keep hands off.

5

I’m in agreement with Gerard, but if you can’t get that to fly, here’s an idea. See if you can draft a policy saying that if people must bring their own computers in, they are responsible for all support. Talk to your HR if you need to, it’s taking away your productivity and also it’s a liability - what if something happens to the person’s laptop after you worked on it? they will point right at you…

6

I agree with everyone here thus far but really you are the only person in a position to fully appreciate how a VP will react to a request to comply with a policy barring personal laptops. My suggestion would be to approach this by addressing the need. There must be a reason why this VP thinks he needs to bring in his laptop. It may be as easy as providing a thumb drive to solve this problem. I’m sure there is a middle ground that can be reached.

7

My thought on supporting employee personal equipment is to make them sign a honking big waiver before you’ll touch it. A lot of them will back away just at that. And getting the CEO to agree to such a requirement is not likely to be that hard, especially if you can talk corporate counsel into it. A lot of this depends on what sort of corporate culture you have.

The problem is that an IT department never wants to alienate stakeholders. Do too much of that and you end up in a losing fight for budget and headcount, and before long everyone’s out on the street, either fired for perceived underperformance or else the company went under due to IT limitations.

8

The CEO should get with the times and get a new PC… I have this conversation with many customers each day that want to squeeze that last bit of life from their PC.

Maybe you should show him the benifits of having W7 and the productivity time he would save if he just got with the times!

This is the same coversation I have with my parents who are too cheep to buy a new PC. Their PC is 13 yrs old (at least) and is dog slow. Would they save a bunch of time and energy by getting a new one? YES. Would I have a lot more hair if they did - YES!

The time spent messing with an old PC is not worth it when you can get a new one for pennies (if you are savvy)!

9

All good stuff mentioned here. There is a simat thread on the forum within the last month. Do a search for it. I’d do it but I am helping the aforementioned user with a personal system at the moment.

10

We have a policy that states users may not use their own laptops and most other personal equipment in the office. If I am under pressure to make an exception, I do, but first I make it clear that I will not support that equipment no matter what. I also check to make sure they are running up-to-date AV software and that their computer is clean.

11

How exactly does he connect his laptop to your network?

does he also employ a switch / hub at his desk?

if he uses a secondary data drop… unplug that drop at the switch…

Blame his machine for a “Network Disruption” and the automation disabled his port.

12

We do not allow any outside device on the network or in the offices, whether it being the very top of the chain senior personnel coming in the office. Out IT policies are pretty strict and showing that the upper levels obey that command reflects on the whole company from doing such things. Probably you should tell him about responsibility and being a role model being that it is defined in the a standard policy adapted in your company.

13

Working in a car dealership I have to deal more with technician personal laptops more so than the higher ups (Techs require laptops as “tools” to reprogram and diagnose cars). Actually most higher ups prefer for the company to buy them a laptop (its free then!). Other than that smartphones are supported as far as setting up e-mail.

14

I just had this happen. I new user insisted on using his personal laptop instead of the one issued to him because it was smaller. I told him that was fine (even though I don’t support personal devices) but I would have to join it to our domain, remove his admin rights, and install our antivirus software. The admin rights really got to him. He took the one issued to him!

15

zero tolerance policy about personal devices. you accept what is given to you, period. there are no exceptions. The CEO hired us to protect the data with in the company, and that generally means that we set the rules about technology and what is permitted and what isnt… that said i would ensure that he kept his “personal” device off of the corporate network as it violates the corp policy.

16

Chris (Microsoft) wrote:

The CEO should get with the times and get a new PC… I have this conversation with many customers each day that want to squeeze that last bit of life from their PC.

Maybe you should show him the benifits of having W7 and the productivity time he would save if he just got with the times!

This is the same coversation I have with my parents who are too cheep to buy a new PC. Their PC is 13 yrs old (at least) and is dog slow. Would they save a bunch of time and energy by getting a new one? YES. Would I have a lot more hair if they did - YES!

The time spent messing with an old PC is not worth it when you can get a new one for pennies (if you are savvy)!

Move a paranoid executive running Windows XP who is used to doing things his way to Windows 7? Funny…

With that OS’s huge learning curve I’m having a tough time getting “regular” people to accept the move. New laptop, yes, but why shoot yourself in the foot with Win 7? Just downgrade to XP and save yourself months worth of problems for someone you really just want to go away…

17

GerardMainardi wrote:

For the security of our network, no external laptops or systems of any kind are allowed, period. CEOs and whatnot get laptops from us they can use.

The policy is cut and dry and there are no exceptions.

I agree with the policy however it is sometimes hard to tell a CEO no you cant bring a laptop or whatnot. you can advise against it and provide one.

18

Personal equipment generally has no use being on the company network. Why does he bring his own in, and why do you need to support it. As he is a VP even if you have a no personal devices policy he may be able to ignore it, but that;s still no reason you should support it. I would take to your manager or upper management about the issue. Your will need their support if you choose to have not allow the device or decide not to offer support for it.

19

I’m going to take this into a different direction. I’m going to encourage people to bring their own shit onto the network.

My gradious plan is to never have to step into the office ever again. I want to be able to fix anything with a beer in my hand and a stripper on my side. To facilitate that, I’m going to give everyone a virtual desktop to remote into. That way, if they fuck it up somehow, it’s quick and easy to repair and replace. And if they mess up their own PC, it’s their own problem.

Think about it, no more spyware removal. No asking for admin rights to their machine. No replacing keyboards, RAM, screeens when they break them. No more “OHHhhhh, why don’t you use Macs! They are so much better!!!” because they can get their own Mac and stop whining.

BYOC is probably not a good idea for some industries, e.g. health care, banking, etc., but for a lot of SMBs, it might be a good option. Biggest cost is to get the VPCs, licensing and hardware is not cheap in that regards. Once established though, it would make for a serious ease of use for us admins.

20

Here they can bring them in and use them on lunch. We don’t support them and the document retention policy states they can’t have work documents on a home computer. They can connect to the wireless, but it’s locked down(no facebook or webmail). I would honestly tell him, look i can’t support this device. It’s out of your control. I just went through this with a engineer. His laptop is slow and the district manager wouldn’t approve him for a new one. So he went and bought one. He called me to get some information and i told him, he can’t have work documents on that computer. Guess he didn’t listen cause the laptop died and he called us because all his work documents were on it. I had him overnight it here. I pulled all our documents off then deleted everything. Mailed him back his broken laptop.