355
votes
Should I let my child's school have access to my kid's personal laptop?
It might just be because I am already "that parent", but it would be a strong NO from me - and the school administration would get a strong talking to about this. I would push to have that policy ...
AviD♦
- 73.5k
169
votes
How do I check that users don't write down their passwords?
As others said, you can't stop them. But you can remove the incentive.
Does your password policy require any of the following?
Changing at regular intervals
Manual entering (password managers ...
- 871
152
votes
Accepted
Should I let my child's school have access to my kid's personal laptop?
Needing to install things is kind of the point of needing the laptop, so it makes perfect sense that they want to install Office, AV, and certificates. There are no surprises there. To do that, they ...
- 132k
142
votes
Accepted
Can Beehive detect a Snowden-like actor?
A backup operator will have the permission and behavioral markers of someone that moves lots of data around. Like any sysadmin where there's no dedicated backup operator in place.
Snowden was a ...
- 55.1k
139
votes
Should I let my child's school have access to my kid's personal laptop?
I wouldn't.
You have no real way to tell exactly what they've changed. Some schools are excessively nosy or controlling.
And even if the district is being respectful of your privacy, they could have a ...
- 3,952
135
votes
How do I check that users don't write down their passwords?
There is no way that you can be sure that a user hasn't written down their password. Even if you have complete access to their computer, what if they noted it down in their phone? Or on paper?
And ...
- 2,135
91
votes
Accepted
Company computers for competent developers, how can you deal with them?
Separate development and production
It is usual practice to give developers local admin / root rights on their workstation. However, developers should only have access to development environments and ...
- 34.6k
63
votes
Should I let my child's school have access to my kid's personal laptop?
Others have already stated why this is a bad idea and I fully agree, don't let them install those stuff (certificates??, no way), now, you don't have to be that parent if you present some options:
...
- 747
61
votes
Does the recommendation to use password managers also apply to corporate environments?
The idea that storing passwords is inherently wrong and that employees should have to memorize them is just naive and detached from reality.
There's simply a limit to the number of random strings a ...
- 17.1k
56
votes
Accepted
Why do companies not give root access to employees on their desktop machines?
Security administrators are responsible for your machine and what happens on your machine. This responsibility violates the basic security model for a single-user Unix machine because the admin (an ...
- 132k
44
votes
Should I let my child's school have access to my kid's personal laptop?
Under these circumstances, the ideal case is simple.
Get a "burner" laptop for schoolwork only.
Use standard tech and low specs suitable for the work at hand (contact their IT dept to find out what ...
- 571
43
votes
Company computers for competent developers, how can you deal with them?
So this answer is from the point of a developer. Keep that in mind.
First, not having "local admin" rights on my own machine is a sign that I should look for a job elsewhere. It's nearly ...
- 1,556
41
votes
Accepted
How to strike a balance between security policies and practical implementation challenges?
Since this question is not a technical one, rather more about human behaviour, you won't get the answer. What you describe is very typical though and I made the same experience.
Complex password ...
- 5,319
35
votes
Should I let my child's school have access to my kid's personal laptop?
Now the school IT department wants to install some software on the laptop and is asking for administrative access.
The school does it because it's easy for them. Lots of parents are computer ...
- 31.6k
34
votes
Should I let my child's school have access to my kid's personal laptop?
From a sysadmins point of view:
They want to install Office, Outlook, an AV and some site certificates.
If you already have an AV installed, (which you should), then another AV will conflict with ...
- 540
25
votes
Why do companies not give root access to employees on their desktop machines?
A few reasons off the top of my head:
ARP poisoning or network flooding attacks on the network would generally require root access to a machine on the network.
Being able to install unauthorised ...
- 427
23
votes
Can Beehive detect a Snowden-like actor?
Anomaly detection systems like Beehive make it easier than before to dig through lots of data and detect suspicious behavior. This means that it is possible for an analyst to focus on the more ...
- 205k
23
votes
Accepted
Is it a good security practice to force employees hide their employer to avoid being targeted?
Hiding your employer would not appear to be of any use at all when you want to hide the employee's email address from the public. If you hide your employer info but spread your contact details far and ...
- 132k
22
votes
Accepted
What does Blue Coat Unified Agent application do?
The BlueCoat Unified Agent has been built to provide security on the cloud. The Unified Agent client monitors the Internet Breakout IP being used by the user and switches from Active to Passive mode ...
- 291
22
votes
Is it a good security practice to force employees hide their employer to avoid being targeted?
The best security practice is to train the employees specifically to avoid phishing and scams in general. Also, you need to test them periodically, to check if they are actually reacting to scams as ...
- 15.9k
21
votes
Should corporate security training be tailored based on a users' job role?
The idea of customising the training to meet user requirements is in fact a very good approach. However, there will have to be certain additions to this approach which will then suit everyone in your ...
- 337
21
votes
How do I check that users don't write down their passwords?
Install a camera behind their desk, better yet multiple cameras to cover all angles, and have somebody watch them.
You might be bothered by this being unethical but don't worry, it's in no way worse ...
- 3,630
19
votes
Company computers for competent developers, how can you deal with them?
From a developer's point of view:
Your job is to prevent change (known bugs and vulnerabilities are better than unknown, right?), but mine is to change things. This puts us at an impasse. My job is ...
- 191
19
votes
How do I check that users don't write down their passwords?
You don't.
By forbidding users to write down their passwords, you're forbidding them to use the second-best password manager in existence. People are generally quite good at protecting the contents ...
- 34.8k
18
votes
Can Beehive detect a Snowden-like actor?
Snowden's intent was data exfiltration and he was also a system admin. So, he had access to large amounts of data normal users didn't and would have a different pattern of how he interacts with the ...
- 191
16
votes
Should I let my child's school have access to my kid's personal laptop?
Let's break this down:
Your concerns as a parent
Privacy: You don't want school staff being able to view what sites your kid is visiting, what files they have on their laptop, and other things that ...
- 59.2k
16
votes
How do I check that users don't write down their passwords?
What is your threat model?
I know I ask that counter-question to almost everything here, but most question about security never state what they actually try to secure against.
Are unauthorized ...
- 10.7k
15
votes
Should I let my child's school have access to my kid's personal laptop?
I don't think anyone else has discussed the certificate issue:
In my experience, a lot of schools use a MITM firewall to intercept HTTP traffic for their filtering policies such as to look at the ...
- 321
14
votes
Company computers for competent developers, how can you deal with them?
A security engineer doesn't maintain computers, that's what the service desk does. In your case you will require him to install three tools:
a hypervisor
docker
database software
From there he can ...
- 54.6k
14
votes
How to strike a balance between security policies and practical implementation challenges?
The best solution is to train your user base to use passphrases.
Passphrases are easier to remember, easier to type - and harder to crack. And the NIST rules that @martinstoeckli mentioned are ...
- 9,678
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible