Avoiding Liability While Fixing Employee PCs? 121
ellem asks: "The upper management team of my company has made a decision that the IT department will work with employee's home computers and laptops. Despite every possible explanation of liability and the loss of proprietary information, the decision was made in order to satisfy a 'need' that the employees have expressed. Many of our employees are, in fact, independent contractors and could go elsewhere with little impact to themselves. Upper management feels offering this service to our employees will separate us from our competitors, and is so committed to this that they have allocated a special budget for tools, software and new hires to handle this particular segment of IT. However, I am still rather worried about general liabilities. While I can keep the network relatively safe and guard against certain types of file transfers, the fear I have is a tech wrecking an employee's home machine/laptop - whether they actually do or the employee perceives that they did. Are any of your shops offering this type of extra service? Do you have any policies in place to protect your company from liabilities that could spring up?"
Waivers anyone? (Score:1, Interesting)
Simple Answer... (Score:2, Interesting)
And rememind the contractors BEFORE they bring in their pc's that illegal adult materials must be reported to the FBI for persecution.(so if they have a kiddie porn collection dont bring the pc in to get fixed) You wouldnt belive how many customers who would bring in their pc's to me back when i worked at the sweatshop called compusa would hear that warning, pick up their pc, walk out, and come back the next day without the offending files.
The real liability is dataloss, because it is impossible to defend against if they claim you wipe out 10 months of files (which were never there to begin with) and the going rate for REAL datarecovery (ISO Clean rooms) is like $900 per GB (multiply that by a 160 or 200gb hard drive and you got a major problem)
Punt! (Score:3, Interesting)
And this doesn't answer your question, but, seriously: WTF?
How sadly misguided is this? If they want to give employees and contractors perks, how about something with a little more common sense. Like healthbenefits (for contractors) or gas/travel vouchers. Both are something people would be glad to have and have tax benefits to the company. Or how about spa gift certs or something where there's little liability.
Alternately, they should subcontract the work out (Clearly they have no problem doing that). Get GeekSquad or something out there to do it for you. Sure, the liability is a headache for you, but I can't believe that any marginally responsible company would take on the infrastructure to do something like this. Maid service for all employees would be cheaper and have less overhead. And I'm sure would be a nice perk.
You're kidding right? (Score:2, Interesting)
Pardon me but it sounds like you're pulling excuses out of you ass because this is a job nobody in your department wants to do. Your execs see it that way too, most likely.
Seriously, what if (during a normal days work) your tech dropped a pc on somebody's foot... you'd be liable for that too, do you bring up the concerns about carrying pc's to managment also?
The company is liable, not the employee... they're obviously willing to accept the risk, so stfu and do your job. Not trying to be an ass, but still, there has to be something more important for you to worry about than this.
Re:It would be much cheaper... (Score:3, Interesting)
In an average corporate deployment the software licenses exceed the cost of the computer. Depending on the area you work on this factor is anything between 2 and 10 times for a desktop. The cost of maintaining a windows machine in man-hours per year depends on the number of machines and tools in use but it is pretty much close to the cost of the computer (once you add up AV, Anti-Spyware, etc). So on, so fourth.
It is not worth it financially. Numbers do not add up. The saving and convenience will be eaten up.
That is besides all the AUP and "my kid installed the spyware" crap.
Taxes (Score:3, Interesting)