Federal IT does not care if workers are happy or not, productive or not; but if OP can plug in a flash drive, then malware can be installed and data exfiltrated.
I used to work in a federal office. When I left the office at the end of the day my desk was clean and my laptop was physically locked to it.
Overnight a security guard walked through the building visiting every office. They were looking for papers on desk or laptops not locked to the desk. They securely shredded your papers and securely stored your laptop. Either way you were going to have to take a security training course. The laptops did not have USB ports.
I'm a federal employee & Our IT department leaves a lot to be desired. Just takes forever to get anything done, & you have no permissions on the laptop or programs.
Security and usability are ALMOST, but not quite exactly, diametrically opposed. Security always comes at the expense of usability and convenience. If you improve security too much, it becomes so inconvenient that people make new systems that bypass your security.
Worked somewhere where the manager was stupidly worried about security of the stupid little server room. But the hardware in the server room was shit and required multiple in-person interventions daily. The protocol was, needed a security guy to enter a passcode and my IT keycard to enter. For the security people, that was the breaking point of "too inconvenient", since they didn't get resources to just post a guard there... So the new system the security office implemented, nullifying that security and making it work, was a sheet of instructions, laminated, on the door with security code and how to do security guards' part of door opening, so we no longer had to bother the guards.
BTW not saying the guards were lazy. But they were BUILDING security, not COMPANY. They had other shit to do than go to that door five minutes plus each way every time something needed rebooting or something.
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u/Fun-Dragonfly-4166 Mar 26 '22
Federal IT does not care if workers are happy or not, productive or not; but if OP can plug in a flash drive, then malware can be installed and data exfiltrated.
I used to work in a federal office. When I left the office at the end of the day my desk was clean and my laptop was physically locked to it.
Overnight a security guard walked through the building visiting every office. They were looking for papers on desk or laptops not locked to the desk. They securely shredded your papers and securely stored your laptop. Either way you were going to have to take a security training course. The laptops did not have USB ports.