Letting home workers have any printer - risks?

Um... question from a thickie (me)

Do they (company staff) need any other support other than drivers? If not I can see little risk, security wise, to the buisness. If you have a robust software install ban included in company policy (in print) from the IT department, any other install undertaken should come under that disciplinary cover surely ?

I've worked for many multi national corporations in the aerospace sector - on the shopfloor - with access to various company intranet systems etc and they have all had robust, and enforced, software, doc printing and personal hardware (pen drives etc) bans.

Cover your own ass and make sure it's in the company policy documentation somewhere :)
 
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bigredshark said:
Well if you feel that's where you are then that's where you are. You're buying a heap of support overhead though.

Just saying no and when they ignore you making their lives as hard as humanly possible tends to correct the behaviour with time if your management don't have the required ability (and this is a management problem - standardising hardware is about as simple and obviously beneficial an idea as exists, if they cannot explain this to the relevant people and have it implemented as policy they're rubbish at their jobs).

So basically, either say no and make it stick or make their lives sufficiently hard that it's easier to give up and do as they're told (That is - 'oh, you bought a non standard printer, the drivers aren't in our standard build so it will be a while before we can security test them and send somebody to roll them out' or 'we're rolling out remote printing from terminal services etc but I'm afraid we can only support approved printers'). Give people a reason to use approved hardware and make it easy for them to do so and they generally will.

When it comes to actual security risk, well not much but some exists with anything. Less permutations of hardware/software will always be statistically more secure than more....
Click to expand...

Most IT polices are there so people can just get on with their jobs and not inadvertently create IT problems for the company e.g. Security, cost, operational risk. No policy works all the time but the main thing is it works most of the time.

The thing to be careful of is not meeting a need a lot if users have if it is easy enough to service. This is when users start bypassing IT and cause all kinds of problems. In the case of printers to save cost and reduce support issues all users should buy from an agreed list of printers that fit a variety of needs. This is especially true in an office where users if allowed buy random printers and create huge support / consumable costs.
 
To be fair the company I work for (public sector) has just put a stop to this. All staff must go through the IT budget holder. All purchasing is done central now stopping users buying what they like. Works a treat! I forgot to mention this.

I know this doesn't help you as own departments have their own budget but this is what happens as result of no control.

You could put a staff email out telling them that if the right printer is not purchased from this list it will not be supported. Simple as that. Your company needs to come down harsh on users otherwise they will take the pea out of the company purchasing what ever they want, whenever they want.

As stated, put a limit on toner spending too otherwise you will get people printing pictures out and piles and piles of un needed documents. After all it's free to the staff right?
 
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