Ah, I see now.  Your original post was describing the rarified air of high security companies and their policies, not the "real" world, where security, if it exists, is largely "security theater", including examples such as the TSA, most building security in NYC, and company policies that are not audited for compliance and/or have no negative consequences for non-compliance.  It would have helped if you had qualified the environment you were speaking about because otherwise, it doesn't make any sense.  You have to admit that most companies are not using high security protocols or procedures, and that the environment you work in is a special case, not the norm.  That being so, your statements in your original post were out of context, as were some of my responses. 

I know you are an expert in high security and protection. I acknowledged that and continue to respect your expertise in those areas.  It's the politics that you've managed to weave into legitimate records management issues and topics recently that I find distasteful.

I am not a fan of BYOD or cloud computing, or having users become the records indexers of the future, but in corporate America very few seem to care. It is happening whether I or you want it to, or not.  These policies and technologies are becoming pervasive everywhere - except the companies you work for.  

We can sound the alarm all we want.  Twitter, Facebook, etc are here, and they appear to be here for the long term, so you either adapt or disappear.  I'm adapting - reluctantly.  The best we can do is cope with these ill advised changes, educate where we can, point out where they are deficient, and "encourage" vendors to provide solutions. We can not stop change, even bad change, but maybe we can influence it to some degree.

I have read about how to construct better passwords.  That's why my passwords are a combination of upper and lower case letters, as well as numbers and characters. Are they still hackable? Sure they are, but it'll take awhile...

I guess working in a relatively small company, you don't know large company politics or culture. In corporate America, where I work, our job is to make things the users want to happen, actually happen, not to be the Debbie Downer in the room, who says that we can't do something our competitors are doing, if the organization believes it is a business advantage to do so.  Most of the time no can't be the answer, but yes with qualifications can be.

Yes, we do live in different worlds.  I live in the world of the majority, and you live in a 'special world", with special needs.

Who cares what people do on their own time?  We have to because they have access to where they work at home and on the move, and whose time it is  has been blurred by technology. Also that's partly because in the world the majority live in, "our own time" is a decreasing luxury.  Even in industries where no one tells you to be available almost 24/7, the expectation is increasingly there.  Having access to business applications and data at home is almost ubiquitous at this point.

The company I currently work for is absolutely fanatic about security, as they should be.  Even from an in-house computer you can't do many things you'd expect to be able to do.  No downloading of software from anywhere or any media.  You can't even add a shortcut to your desktop.  But we still worry about everything you wrote about, especially users using portable devices away from the office.  Nevertheless, BYOD is here.  We tell the user who has a BYOD that it can not be used until certain policies are put in place on the device, including passwords structured according to our policies, our ability to reach out to the device and wipe it clean if it is lost or stolen, and many more too numerous to detail.  But we still worry.  The Records Dept being burned down or flooding is my own personal nightmare, and has been for 26+ years.

Well, you know what they say, talented people reach goals others can't attain, geniuses attain goals others can't see.  I'd like to think, and many of the people I work with regularly show, that they are talented, and the geniuses here really are brilliant.  I'd be willing to bet that they are keeping us as safe as we can be, since we've had none of the breaches you've talked about.  But we still worry...and that's a good thing.

Bill Creamer
Records & Conflicts Manager
NYC



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