[protocolture]

>Companies have no business telling their employees which specific programs they can and cannot run to do their jobs, that's an absurd level of micromanagement.

Yet so many receptionists think that the application attached to the email sent by [e-mail] is a reasonable piece of software to run. Curious.

[samplatt]

False dichotomy. The manager of the receptionist, or the head of their department, can decide what's appropriate for their job and dictate this to IT, and then they can lock it down.

At my work currently IT have the first say and final say on all software, regardless of what it does or who is using it. It's an insane situation. Decisions are being made without any input from anyone even in the department of the users using the software... you know... the ones that actually make the company money...

[davkan]

No, it’s unreasonable for end users and non technical managers to simply dictate to IT what software is to be installed on corporate devices. They can submit requests to IT with a business justification which should be approved if can be accommodated.

Maybe your employer’s IT department is in the habit of saying no without a proper attempt to accommodate which can be a problem but, the solution is not to put the monkeys in charge of the zoo.

At my old job we had upper management demanding exceptions to office modern auth so they could use their preferred email apps. We denied that, there was no valid business justification that outweighed the security risk of bypassing MFA.

We then allowed a single exception to the policy for one of our devs as they were having issues with Outlook’s plaintext support when submitting patches to the LKML. Clear and obvious business justification without an alternative gets rubber stamped.

Security is a balance that can go too far in either direction. Your workstations probably don’t need to be air gapped, and susan from marketing probably shouldn’t be able to install grammarly.

[samplatt]

>No, it’s unreasonable for end users and non technical managers to simply dictate to IT

Again, false dichotomy. It's possible to meet in the middle, collaborate and discuss technical requirements. It's just that that rarely happens.

Our software (built by us, has regular code reviews and yearly external security audits and is internal-use-only amongst electrical engineers and computer-science guys) regularly gets disabled or removed by IT without warning by accident, and it's usually a few days before it's re-enabled/able to be reinstalled, since the tiny IT dept is forced to rely on external agencies to control their white-listing software.

Your "monkeys in charge of the zoo" metaphor is in full effect at my workplace, but in this case, the monkeys are IT and their security theater.

[davkan]

> The manager of the receptionist, or the head of their department, can decide what's appropriate for their job and dictate this to IT, and then they can lock it down.

You said exactly that.

Again, maybe your IT team is garbage, I don’t really care to litigate your issue with them. I specifically said IT should accommodate requests when possible and not be overzealous when saying no.

What you previously suggested is that is that stakeholders should give their demands to IT and that IT should figure out how to make it happen. Doesn’t sound like collaboration to me.

In my experience end users and management are very rarely aware of the requirements placed upon IT to ensure the security of company infrastructure when it comes passing audits, whether that’s for cyber insurance, or CMMC compliance or whatever else.

It’s plainly obvious that products don’t exist to sell without developers or engineers. But you can’t sell your product to customers if they require SOC and you don’t have it or if your entire infrastructure gets ransomwared.

I’ve had to tell very intelligent and hard working people that if I accommodated their request the government would no longer buy products from our company.

[samplatt]

>What you previously suggested is that is that stakeholders should give their demands to IT and that IT should figure out how to make it happen. Doesn’t sound like collaboration to me.

That's fair; I did make it sound pretty one-sided there.

[protocolture]

>At my work currently IT have the first say and final say on all software, regardless of what it does or who is using it.

Yeah but software isnt software.

Like I have a customer with users that just randomly started using VPN software to manage their client sites. VPN software that exposes the user machine directly to uncontrolled networks. This causes risks in both directions, because their clients run things like datacenters and power stations. Increases security risks for their business, and increases security risks for their customers, not to mention liability.

IT should be neutral. but IT done right, is guided by best practice. IT is ultimately responsible and accountable for security and function. You cant be responsible and accountable without control, or you exist just to be beaten up when shit goes sideways.

>the ones that actually make the company money...

Making the company money in an uncontrolled fashion is just extra distance to fall. If you ship a fantastic product with a massive supply chain induced vuln that destroys your clients there was no point in making that money in the first place.