\"D. Clyde Williamson\"
> Martin writes:
>
> > In most company handbooks there is a rule saying that the phones are for
> > business or emergency calls only. This is rarely enforced, however;
> > Still, it's there predominantly for liability purposes. So most
> > companies do in fact have such a policy. The difference is that there is
> > no way to determine programmatically [yet] which calls are
> > business-related and which are not; Making that determination requires a
> > human.
>
> True, but if that is not enforced, why try to enforce one about the
> internet? If people are considered smart enough to use the phone,
> train them and trust them to use the net. One company I've worked with
> simply makes it known that phone calls are logged, that keeps the
> workers on their toes. When abuse (as determined by HR) happens, the
> employee is fired. They adopted this same policy for Internet
> use... and their logging shows much less garbage than many that
> activly filter/block programs, protocols or pages.
But it's not because they're considered to be smart enough; It's because
there is no good way to stop them. You CAN stop people from using the
various chat services, though I admit it's difficult. But people NEED
the phone to do their job, typically, so you have to let them use it.
You don't generally block long distance, because people will need to
make LD calls to do their work. But they certainly don't need to use
'net chat to do their work (except in the tiniest handful of cases) and
you CAN block it, so you might as well. (Note that we don't block it here.)
> In the end IT expends resources in an 'arms race' with the users. Is
> that wise? I guess thats up to the IT Management of each company.
It's probably not wise. The proper method is to fire the people who
abuse it and hire people who don't. However, it can be hard to find
people these days for certain jobs, so that's usually not a working
process. It takes much less effort on the part of the firewall admin,
who can stop many people from chatting at once, than it does on the part
of the users to find a new solution, so it's still a winning scenario
for most companies if they do have a problem with messenger-type
applications.
Of course, you could always go a step further and institute system
policies that don't allow users to install software...
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