Laptop Docking station without USB-C?

1492 wrote:
We also send regular phishing emails to staff. It's generally the upper level management and directors who fall for them.

Why doesn't that surprise me?

I receive 200-300 emails each and every day. It's all I can do to keep up anymore. My personal home email is out of control. While I enjoy doing forums, my personal email is one of the last things I want to look at when I get "off work". I get 13 "marketing" emails for everyone I need to pay attention to on my personal account. Work email, my boss, his boss, and some key co-workers are all I pay attention to anymore. I had a 5 minute phone conversation with somebody on Friday, and after we were done, I had 25 new emails... PEOPLE, IT'S FRIDAY AFTERNOON! What's worse, my bosses email is 10x worse than mine. While he tends to not ignore my emails, I will often send him an IM anytime something really critical needs his attention.

To give you an example, I was CC'd on a series of emails of a very expensive part (10k+) sitting on the receiving dock, no identification who it belonged to, didn't help the box listed and second set of part numbers, and the paperwork a third set of part numbers. Shipping department doesn't know anything, which is why we have specific instructions for suppliers to ship parts. They receive hundreds of packages every day. When the supervisor called me, asking for my help, I started paying attention. Finally, I got involved... and sent out more emails, LOL. One of the people I tagged owned the part, and came to retrieve it.

We also send regular phishing emails to staff. It's generally the upper level management and directors who fall for them.

My employer sent out a fake phising email. It was very well done. I forwarded it to a special email address, and got a thank you, I passed the test :)

In my org, to get local admin rights requires a written justification which must be approved by the requestor's supervisor, and by a unit CTO. The last being the most difficult hurdle.

We don't issue higher domain admin rights if the requestor does not already work in IT.

In any case, having local admin rights which allows installing software not on a staff service portal, requires completing minimum security training hours every year to keep elevated privileges. That does not mean one can install any software. It needs to be on an approved list, or an exception must be granted which requires security review.

Everyone in my org must complete a one-hour computer security course every year to maintain their staff account. Pretty much standard in most enterprise environments. I purposely waited until April 1 as I wanted my certificate to reflect that date. :W

The whole purpose is to protect the integrity of the enterprise network. We're also required to report any network security compromises to US-CERT.

GDE - years ago, when there was a piece of snooping malware that not only was spread via outlook, I had a higher level IT friend send it to me. There was ZERO indication that I had received something, no alerts, not even file to click on. I sent that to IT, and from an corp IT friend of mine, it kind of rocked their little rosey world.

WRT USB, we had a chinese national employee that managed to steal corporate detail design data, using USB flash drives. So now, everything is locked down. Truly sad part, I did have admin rights on my computer, and I gave them up. Other than occasional need for a printer while I'm working from home, in general don't need it. That and being able to have ONE docking station that will work on multiple computers :)

Speaking of DELL, there is a major security flaw that could affect hundreds of millions of PCs. See Sentinel Labs.

Make sure you install the patch when available.

I'm manually checking my home DELL desktop and Alienware laptop to see if they are affected.

philh wrote:
except if the hardware is not corporate supplied, there is ZERO way to get drivers installed. Begging doesn't work, not that I tried, but I did :)

Printers, Corporation only used HP, AND you had to link to the corporate print server. I can't even directly connect a HP printer and get it to work. They've done an awesome job!

Yeah, sometimes they go way overboard..

The company I recently left was so worried about protected health information leaking out via USB flash drives or even burned CD/DVD they required all company PCs to have McAfee drive encryption installed..

USB flash drives had to also be reformated with the drive encyption..

Sounds great on paper except until you had to transfer files that exceed 2GB in size and then the drive encryption would randomly flake out and corrupt the USB drive.. Then you lost everything on the drive..

I discovered that McAfee ultimately based their encryption scheme on DOS and was subject to 2GB file size limitations of FAT32! It tried to "span" the large files but would flake out..

Part of my job was copying premade PC images from corporate HQ servers to production image server system.. Images that were 15GB-25GB in size..

Couldn't get a IT waiver to get rid of the encryption because my PCs were not in a "secure area" and were out in the open floor..

The work around?

Connect a "pirate" non IT PC to the company IT network, the PC didn't need to join the network, only needed a IP address.. Setup a shared folder on that PC.. Then search for that PC name and connect to that shared folder..

So much for "security", a major flaw that is in every Windows PC on this Earth.. And no, it is not a secret, it is a well known flaw that can't be fixed unless you never want to connect to anything.

except if the hardware is not corporate supplied, there is ZERO way to get drivers installed. Begging doesn't work, not that I tried, but I did :)

Printers, Corporation only used HP, AND you had to link to the corporate print server. I can't even directly connect a HP printer and get it to work. They've done an awesome job!

philh wrote:
Not sure this is making it easier to understand :)

I'm stuck with Dell docking station. Corporate computer is locked down and will not accept drivers that aren't in the initial laptop load.

Getting that docking station to work on the desktop PC is the challenging part. Project will probably be put on hold for awhile, I have some other higher priority projects.

I haven't followed this thread, though USB3 hubs in WIN10/MAC should not require installation of additional drivers. Unless your enterprise IT policy locks down the USB ports for security reasons?

You need to get in touch with your central IT to find out what hardware is on your approved list. Just because it's an approved DELL laptop/desktop does not mean a particular DELL hub is allowed. There may also be a procedure to get a hardware/software exception after review.

In any case, if you require additional hardware drivers, then your IT desktop support w/admin rights will need to install them. They can remote into your laptop to do so. This is standard procedures in most enterprise IT environments.

philh wrote:
Not sure this is making it easier to understand :)

I'm stuck with Dell docking station. Corporate computer is locked down and will not accept drivers that aren't in the initial laptop load.

Getting that docking station to work on the desktop PC is the challenging part. Project will probably be put on hold for awhile, I have some other higher priority projects.

:h

They can "lock" the USB ports down preventing use of USB flash drives or other devices but not sure about accepting drivers for new hardware..

The problem may be they are controlling Windows Update through group policies and that may be blocking or preventing Windows from being able to search the drivers library online which is done through Windows update..

But, then how did you get your printers to work on the new PC? Company would have had to include drivers for your printers..

Remote desktop via Internet?

That one can be problematic, DWs work uses "WinTerms" which are a modern day version of the old "dumb terminal" were the terminal loaded the OS remotely through disk images and the terminal has no HD.. We have had to go through a lot of song and dance to get a PC at home and our local printer/scanner to work with her remote desktop disk image while working remotely. She has to select the local printer/scanner each time she logs in since that info is never saved to the remote desktop image.

May be much more to this story than meets the eye.

Looks like in the mean time you are pretty much stuck moving cables back and forth..

They do make HDMI switches which work well and you can also get USB switches to allow you to "share" things like monitors and printers between multiple PCs..

Something else that is possible to do, enable printer sharing on one PC.. That PC now becomes a network "print server". Will require the PC with printers to be shared to be powered on all the time and connected to your router.