Policies of the draconian sort…I love working at a bank!

Matt Stratton | May 22, 2007 min read

So yesterday I got the following email:

Matt, CSIRT received the alert below showing that you used AOL chat from the JPMC infrastructure. Use of external instant messaging and webmail are violations of the IT Control Policies due to the inherent security risks involved.

Additionally, the firm’s workstation inventory system shows your machine has several unauthorized software programs installed, including games, chat clients, iTunes, Google and Yahoo utilities, multimedia programs, etc. The full list of questionable programs is pasted below and in the attached file for your reference.

Please provide your exception ID for this usage, or:
confirm removal of the all questionable software from your machine,
cease installing unauthorized software and
stop using internet chat from JPMC assets and infrastructure.

Please note that continued violations without an exception requires CSIRT to notify Employee Relations as well.

_Access 2003 Bible

AOL Instant Messenger

Call of Duty(R) 2

CompanionLink for Google Calendar

DiskView

Flickr Uploadr 2.3

Foxit Reader

Google Desktop

Google Earth

Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer

iTunes

Magic ISO Maker v5.4 (build 0239)

Picasa 2

PINs 4

Replay Media Catcher

Sid Meier’s Civilization 4

Sid Meier’s Civilization 4 – Warlords

SMSNomadP2P R1

Trillian

Viewpoint Media Player

WinRAR archiver

Yahoo! Install Manager_

So, first of all, this means that no more IM-ing from work. So if you need to talk to me, email me on Gmail (I can get that on my BlackBerry). I’m also annoyed that they made me uninstall iTunes, but I don’t really use it at work, so whatever. The really annoying thing is that they want me to uninstall PINS (password management tool) and Magic ISO Maker (I use this to create floppy disk images for remote media mounting on HP RiLO boards).

I uninstalled everything except PINS, because, well, I need it.