Torrenting at Work

I didnt notice because i wasnt looking, i was only working on her word document as she was having problems printing.

Anyway i've contacted the IT guys who said they thought the ports should already be blocked but they will do something about it. So everything seems to be sorted.
 
I'm an IT Manager and I deal with Torrents/Pron on the following manner.

1. First offence I speak to the person directly. Explain it is against company policy and I don't expect them to do it again.
2. Second offence I speak to their line manager and allow them to deal with the situation.
3. Third offence I go straight to HR (or one of the directors if it is somebody in HR).

I know company policy allows for me to go straight to the third step - I like to give people a chance.
 
Is she downloading illegal/copyrighted material or is she in breach of your company policies? If so slap it to her, if she's technically your boss, then she should damn well know better and be appreciative that you're doing your job correctly.
 
platypus said:
Do you have an IT policy at all? Doesn't really sound like it.
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The whole place sounds pretty small anyway, more like a family business than anything. He was made IT manager on the basis he seemed to know more about computers than anyone else already there, it doesn't exactly sound like a massive office, i'd be surprised if there were more than 10 people.
 
Please don't take this the wrong way but if you need to ask you shouldn't be IT manager.
 
i'm a little confused that you didn't notice the torrent client in the task bar, on the desktop or notice that the bandwith was getting pummeled, even though people were only sending emails and browsing the web ....
 
Like someone already said, Secretary is a Director...small company probably has no policies or similar in place. Hell, no offense to Jock, but the I.T Manager has been appointed because he knows a little bit more about technology than the rest of them.

First thing to do with is speak with the MD and ask them about an ICT Policy and or Internet Use policy. If they don't give a monkies go back to your day job and don't worry about it. If he does care then explain to him about torrents and what it is doing to your company bandwidth let alone the risks it can have on your network. Let's not forget to mention if any investigation is had with downloading illegal material the business might get it seriously in the pooper.

Alternatively, get the I.T Consultants to block the ports on the work firewall and job done. It will no longer work for her, and she'll either balls up and ask why its not working or stay quiet - probably the latter.
 
If it's copyrighted content I'd imagine it could cause some serious legal issues for the company if the copyright holder where to find out.
 
People can install software on your system? :|

If the files being downloaded are infected with some form of malware, it could cause you some issues depending on the AV software used on the system. Also, if it's copyrighted material, then there is a legal issue. In our place, before we were farmed out, my boss was a senior manager so it was easy to deal with issues like this. Our IT policy is also very strict on stuff like that so it is easy to enforce, even for the principal. But if you're not actually responsible for the system, then you need to refer it to whoever is.
 
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i'm a little confused that you didn't notice the torrent client in the task bar, on the desktop or notice that the bandwith was getting pummeled, even though people were only sending emails and browsing the web ....
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I was asked to find out why her word document didnt print, why would i even be looking at her taskbar. And i wouldnt even know where to look at the bandwith, and why would i, im there to fix simple issues nothing more. Jeez looks like IT manager was the wrong thing to say, it just happens to be what they call me and means next to nothing. If a program wont start i sort it out thats about it
 
Who would have thought a simple question could be picked apart.

Bored?

Knock yourself out, ive got the answers i needed.
 
At our place we can install software, but they use reg checking software to check for things you've installed that aren't licensed or which shouldn't be installed. You could still install utorrent or something which runs off a single executable. That being said, the IT policy prohibits downloading loads of stuff, and most dodgy stuff is blocked at the dns level and I'd guess bittorrent is port blocked if not blocked via some kind of packet sniffing. I imagine you'd get nailed to the wall if you tried to find a way around it.

By way of coincidence, someone I know of in another office got a disciplinary for photocopying textbooks at work. I'm sure they'd take a similar stance with other means of copyright infringement.
 
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