Going back in time?

Hitachi plays dumb in shunning notebooks
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5511536.html

What does it say when a large tech company appears to have thrown in the towel with respect to trying to secure themselves through traditional means? I'm sure a lot has to do with cost savings not just lost data.

You would think that the people with the most senistive data would be higher ups ... maybe it is easier in Japan but around here it would be difficult to tell management they can't have a laptop anymore. Half the time you can't get them to throw away the post-it with their password on it.

Well... let's think about it.....

Consider an environment where you can, at a single point, allow permissions or not even have, programs you determine to be a security risk, all upgrades etc. take place in a single action and pass to all machines instantly, all logging of all workstations is centralized, no workstation can "hide" malware on it's HD and all users have a "consistent environment".

Yes, it can be achieved through AD but it's time, (read money), consuming and can cause problems quite easily.... Then again, so can the environment Hitachi are planning.....

I would love to see thier budget for helpdesk and loss of productivity.... They will probably need to double it.....

Actually Tiger~ I have worked with these sorts of environments for the past 5 years or so. You get moans from pondlife who cannot load their game software, bugger around with things in general and so on. Then there's the executives who want this and that which is non-standard.........OH the glum little faces :D more fun than beating them with a rubber high pressure hose............

We estimated that going for a locked down PC environment actually saved £300 ($550) per annum in support costs, per desk top.

On the sites with Citrix and servers/dumb terminals the savings were even greater, as the updates and roll-outs took hours, rather than days or weeks, because you only have to update the servers. On the sites with locked down PCs you know that what works on the reference machine will work on all of the clients so you can do unattended remote installations/updates, with a minimal failure rate.

Where you once had local support teams on each site, you can now have a centralised call centre in an inexpensive location. Much easier to plan staffing levels and time management.

Users get a better service from the help centre as well, because the operative knows that they have an identical system in front of them. Hey we see that every day on this site? the number of questions that you have to ask before you can suggest a solution.

OK I have had the bad times as well............the "conglomerate", a corporation formed by acquisition, so all the divisions have totally different systems.............but that is another story :eek: