After self hosting several services for a few users, with SSO, backups, hardware issues etc, I really appreciate how good the IT was in my old company. Everything was connected, smooth, slick and you could tell it was secure. I had very few issues and when I did, they were quickly solved. Doing this all at scale for thousands of employees spread across the world, it is a wonderful sight to see.
Now at my current company, it’s at the opposite end of the scale where I almost believe that I could do a better job by myself! They’ve trying to do everything you would expect but somehow doing it wrong. They are so heavy on security I have a Citrix environment that takes me 3 logins to get to, fails constantly and means I can’t work without internet (like on a long train journey for work purposes recently), and on the other hand they’ve only just turned off admin rights for users so we could’ve installed anything we wanted!!! All our attachments (incoming and outgoing) are saved to a secure website (like OneDrive) and replaced with a link. It doesn’t save the file names on the email so it’s really tricky to find old emails if it’s a document you’re looking for. I could go on but just venting at this point as it’s so frustrating!!!
Thank you to the good IT people out there. Your roles are so important but not appreciated enough!
Tell them to move to yubikey or similar hardware key which is far more secure than any password policy will ever be and vastly more user friendly. Only downside is the intense shame if you manage to lose it.
The key should stick with the user thus not be stored with the computer when not in use. The key isn’t harmless of course but it takes a very deliberate targeting and advance knowledge about what it goes to and how it can be used. It’s also easy to remote revoke. If you’re extra special paranoid you could of course store the key locked at a separate site if you want nuclear codes levels of security.