Protecting your network

Ok let me cut to the chase, how do you deal with computers on your Network brought in by end users? Now if you’re a church IT guy you’re probably reading between the lines here and thinking Macs. Truth is you’re right. In the Church world it seems it’s not uncommon for staff members and interns to bring in their Macs. I’m guessing you have some people bringing in their PC laptop which is the same thing and it’s just as bad… possibly worse.

I’m assuming this issue isn’t going away anytime soon. Not for my network and not for the networks of my counterparts across the world. So with that in mind, we must look at security.  I’m not talking security so that I can be powerful and keep the Mac guys off my network. I’m talking security so that I give people (Mac guys included) more freedom in the long run.

The way I see it, in order to get Macs on our network and make everyone happy these are the hurdles we need to overcome:

Security

Exchange integration

File Sharing

Backups

It’s my plan to keep asking about these issues until I have what it takes to make a computer that’s been invited onto the network get on and play well.

Comments

[Tony Dye]

Well Ed, I guess it just once again proves what a nice guy you are! At perimeter, we don't allow any "foreign" machines on our network -- PC, Mac, etc. The closest we allow is for a Mac to be evaluated/approved and then connected. Our Mac users have to go through a checklist and then sign a Mac covenant regarding anti-virus and operation. So, strangely, that means we're more Mac friendly that "unknown" PC friendly. Hmmm...never quite thought of it that way...

[Ed Buford]

In a corporate world you'd get fired for bringing in your own computer and plugging it into the network. This is such a different environment and I'm struggling to figure out how to be secure and not be the computer Nazi. I don't want to make things hard on my team, but at the same time there has to be a baseline of security that is maintained.

[David Szpunar]

I've been dealing with this for a while, but I haven't had a good solution until recently: put personal computers on the public network (the public wi-fi connection). If they need to get to their email, webmail should work fine. Not sure as far as fileshares go, but it hasn't been a huge issue so far. I'm still working on getting the public network access configured, so I have no idea if this will really work, but that's what I'm hoping. If that doesn't cut it, I'll have to go back to the drawing board.

This is a bit of an older post; do you have any updates on this? I haven't finished reading through your archives yet, but I will as time allows.