Anounced Today - No Mod Laptops To Go Home...

[Lima Juliet]

Anyone else get a very long tannoy message about not taking Service laptops away from Service establishments today?:eek:

Well done MoD, you have just stopped me from working from home - thank you for giving me my evenings back again. :D

Or did I mishear the meloderous rant from the girl on the tannoy?

LJ

[D-IFF_ident]

Same message here - although it sounded like "All personnel are to now shut the stable door, I say again, all personnel are to now shut the stable door". :cool:

[Lima Juliet]

Excellent, I can't wait to tell the CO why I haven't finished my work.

"Well Sir, the Secretary of State banned me from doing SJARs/OJARs whilst away on det in the USA and I couldn't finish them when I got home either!"

Once again, Mr Browne, you're Ministry has surpassed itself - ever thought of becoming the Minister for Sound? You might cause less damage...

http://www.mp3sugar.com/ishow.img/artist/artist_3991

The Minister was heard to say,

"I am very sorry for losing the lost Boy George records and I have instructed that no music or mixing decks are to be taken home by Ministry workers. Mobile discos are also not exempt from this ruling..."

[Lima Juliet]

Alternative Swiss Des ending...

http://www.powdermonster.net/amusing/swiss_tony.jpg

"You see, Prime Minister, losing a laptop to a car thief is much like making love to a beautiful woman...rumaging about in the dark to locate a thin dark box, whilst trying not to turn her on so that she emits a high pitch whine or attracts a passing sailor."

[adr]

I think I know who's been employed as damage control consultant on this one.

http://i25.tinypic.com/bhgjfa_th.jpg

adr

[Wensleydale]

Our Rules:

Must have encryption to take a laptop off base. Cannot take any form of magnetic media containing personnel data off base, (CD, USB Pen etc).

I bet that this will really improve the DAG on Det. (Deployed Admin Group - much more deadly than the old Divisional Artillery Group). I wonder how they will manage to mess us about without all the data forms to fill in and and send daily to wherever they send them!

[Lurking123]

erm, where does this leave the "paperless office" concept?

PS. No tannoys at our place, they went T/U some years back and there ain't any money to fix them. :)

[ORAC]

Many, many years ago they brought in the policy of laptops with classified data having removable HDD which had to be carried on your person 0 remove the V&A from the classified. Why the hell don't the same rules apply to this sort of data? Come to think of, why aren't, 10 years down line, all laptops bought with removable HDDs?

I work for a multinational, all our company laptops are fitted with PGP and everyone has their own electronic keys to generate the codes for logging onto their laptop, the VPN etc.

It's not exactly rocket science......

[OCCWMF]

Aaaah but it's expensive, non-rocket science.

[teeteringhead]

But one gathers that about 600 laptops have gone AWOL/nicked/lost in the last ten years!! That's more than one a week ....


...... and we've only just noticed.....:ugh:

[r supwoods]

Personal Information only...... Definition please!

:sad:

[tucumseh]

...... and we've only just noticed.....


I'd say with 99% certainty that the losses were known about and just ignored. When we moved from London to ShabbyWood 10/13 of ours went "missing". Not nicked you understand, just permanently missing. No-one was interested, least of all the security guy who was struggling with the fact that whoever specified ABW didn't ask for secure cabinets for classified docs, which were just left lying on the floor. The "planners" had announced a paper free environment so most of the cabinets had been sold off the day we left London. They were promptly bought back at huge expense.

[Frelon]

......but I bet that most (if not all) of you have your own PC at home.

......and (secure) technology is available that allows you to logon to your system at the office (nearly everybody has ADSL) and continue to work and have access to all of your files, albeit remotely. You should not be allowed to download anything onto your local hard disc.

Now how clever is that? Perhaps too simple for MoD!

[modtinbasher]

I know a man who moved from Shabby to a Logs place in Cambs and his PC went to his house. It eventually gave up it's ghost. You know what he did? Spent hours on the phone trying to get it fixed by the MoD!

I just can't believe it!!!

[tucumseh]

mtb

I know it's barely believable but that sounds about right. It wouldn't have been one of the new (at the time) networked PCs, but an older one (although as the first ABW PCs were actually very dated it's possible what he got had a better spec). The deal was you use it at home and if there was a problem you call the IT guys. No call out mind you, it had to be brought to work for repair! Wasn't just the PC, but laser printers as well. I know a few who still have them.

You have to remember that this was in the days when CDP had directed that some staff do an extra 20 hours a week in the office (unpaid) and specific projects were only to be done at home in the evenings and week-ends, regardless of classification. At the time I didn't even have e-mail at home so you were constantly humping docs back and forth. The security regs simply hadn't kept pace with the technological changes. Having seen this, I'm afraid nothing surprises me about these security breaches.

[Wader2]

Working from home is actually permissible under civil service rules although your workspace has to be properly defined and I believe inspected.

I likethe final paragraph of the instruction:

Finally, I take this opportunity to remind all users of policy compliant laptops which have full disc encryption installed that they must ensure that when the laptop is not in use, the laptop and any security token (such as BeCrypt) and password are kept separate so that in the event that either is lost or stolen, data on the laptop cannot be compromised. Please ensure that this message is communicated throughout your management area as soon as possible."

'course no one would be so foolish to keep them together now would they?

Would they?

[Cyprus countrybred]

Does this figure of 600 include the ones which get left unlabelled on baggage trolleys at Brize Norton passenger terminal, and are subsequently blown up?

cc

[GasFitter]

Any other Senior CS knee jerk reactions coming our way?

1. F3 crews banned from all Pop Concerts!
2. All RAF Officers to be banned from Honours List following VR(T) 'Walter' fiasco!

[adminblunty]

Surely the MOD should be more worried about the transmission of unencrypted JPA data over the MOD IT network, which I believe is connected to the internet? Then again I'm not an IT geek. Anyone from 591SU care to comment?

[GasFitter]

Surely that ban should be a ban on car theft.

Not really, as we seem to be attacking the 'cause' not the 'act' ie otherwise they would ban 'losing laptops'!

Next it will be ban flying in case there's a crash!

[blogger]

I had to do a project demo to a company (part of an IPT thing)

No lap top.
No cd burner in the office.
USB keys not allowed due to regs.

So I took a floppy disk. Well I looked a total plonka at the company company demo.....standing there with a floppy disk......their computer used for the presentation had no floppy drive.... and they had not seen a floppy drive for donkey's years.

And the folks was only last year. :ugh:

The RAF beats you with a stick with rules and regs, treats you like a thief, and never gives you the damn tools to do the job, however they expect you to do the job.

So what does everone do? Well 2 options:

1. You do the work on your own private laptop and break every rule in the book.

2. You continue with your RAF issue floppy disk looking even more of a total plonka.

Tools to do the job! Simple no tools the job does not get done.

I just wish more folks in the service would do option 2 above then things might get sorted.

[BEagle]

You could always turn up with a huge pile of OHP slides......

I'm surprised that CIS-Plod didn't tell you that even unformatted floppy disks could be "Han sickurity risk, ho-yus"....:hmm:

The infuriating projection systems some parts of the RAF use cannot even be connected to an external speaker's laptop these days, it seems...:rolleyes: They never have the correct cables and even if you supply one, there's inevitably a faff with blue screens and bemused audiences as 'INPUT SEL' and other geek-hieroglyphics appear on the corners of the screen to muted applause, whilst various attempts are made by increasingly senior officers grappling with a remote control of unfathomable complexity (and flat batteries) to persuade a picture to appear on the screen!

[SirToppamHat]

I've just written an impact statement relating to this nonsense.

One of the options is to use our own laptops for (UNCLAS) ops data. I am quite happy to use mine as long as they pay me - it's £150 a day, and the mouse is extra, as is the Office Software!

It wouldn't be so bad if we knew what the approved encryption means was, but as far as we can tell, the powers that be don't know yet or aren't saying.

I am guessing Kilgetty or Stonegate or some such. What's the betting it's about £500 a machine?

STH

[Wensleydale]

STH,

Our section needs laptops in order to carry out some of our primary functions, but this has now stopped until the appropriate security software goes on board. We have been quoted by the plods at £250 - £300 per laptop for a license and... yes you've guessed it.... there is no budget to pay for these and so this work has to stop.

:ugh: or is it :{?



They know the cost of everything and the value of nothing!:oh: