[Esa-l] Convincing Users to Patch

[Chris Payne]

It takes a piece of lumber known as a 2x4 and some extreme
swinging on your part.

This has been a problem with my 325 "L"-type users (lusers),
and their artificial feeling of supremacy over the IT Guy"tm"  (me).

By installing Johns' Sanitizer, I nearly lost my job due to 
invasion of privacy (duh? ), until the Director of our department
received five infected emails during the time I was being 
turned into a "raped-ape" in his office.   The impact hit home
for him when the viruses being intercepted were from the 
VP of our organization (fratricide at its best).

All of a sudden, me (the IT guy) is a hero. This BOFH doesn't
accept appologies very lightly.  Almost always, you have to 
"DRAW A PICTURE" for your users. They can't comprehend
the impact of their unbridled access on the Windoze OS.

It just makes you angry when you are protecting the users
from themselves, and they don't care to play along.

- Chris Payne


On Wed, 02 May 2001 15:33:39 -0300, Andre Kajita - Administrador da Rede wrote:

>Greets,
>
>I'm just now getting over an almost flamewar with a luser over
>patching his MS OutLook(tm).  His LookOut's been sending my users
>Hybris on a regular basis - three a day - and when I finally came
>around to suggesting that he patch his system his response was - other
>than "no, I won't" - plain and simple:
>
>"I have better things to do than to patch my programs"
>
>This got my blood boiling SO FAST I shut down my mail server to avoid
>flaming the guy to kingdom come...  He isn't my luser - if he was his
>boss would receive a formal complaint from the IT dept but I'd up
>update his client in a few minutes - so in this case I can't educate
>him in the follies of the Dark Side and teach him some proper BOFH
>respect.
>
>What I ask is - what can be done with these users?  I, as a network
>admin, work hard to keep my systems up to date and 'secure' but I know
>that one single "I'm not using Netscape" user is enough to put my
>whole network at risk - how does someone manage to convince them to
>practice safe-Outlooking?
>
>Andre.
>-- 
>"Your password must be at least 18770 characters(...)"
>http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q276/3/04.asp
>--
>Andre Kajita - Administrador da Rede <admin at camarasjc.sp.gov.br>
>Camara Municipal de Sao Jose dos Campos - SP
>http://www.camarasjc.sp.gov.br
>_______________________________________________
>E-mail Security Announce list mailing list
>E-mail Security Announce list at spconnect.com
>http://www.spconnect.com/mailman/listinfo/esa-l
>


- - 

Chris Payne 
Network Administrator
Physical Resources Dept, 
University of Guelph
(519)824-4120  x2882
cpayne at pr.uoguelph.ca