help I T and I are battling

[mason55]

 I am a town employee and am having a tiff with IT department. Have a town laptop that has both a verizon card and an internal one that came with dell laptop. Have recently asked to have the ability to go through dell system to pick up signal in court building. This is due to verizon card being to slow and getting dropped.

  I T says no because than someone could get into mainframe system of town. Mind you when I am using a signal say from my router at home or signal available at courthouse. I am just going on to the internet to check something. I am not looking to hook up to towns mainframe or go through towns system.

 I am not ever downloading anything back onto towns system only updating files from town so I have current info on laptop. This is done back at town not through internet

  Didi I explain that enough?

[BC_Programmer]

and... what exactly do you need help with? We can't help you circumvent any restrictions that IT placed on the laptop, even if they were justified.

[soybean]

Do you know what IT would need to change in order for you to access the network via your built-in wireless adapter?  I would think nothing, that the change would have to be in your laptop, but I may be wrong. 

Do others in the office use laptops?  Do they all have to use a Verizon card?

We can't help you circumvent any restrictions that IT placed on the laptop....

Agreed.

[mason55]

Is what they say true? Can someone go from my laptop and get into the mainframe of the town when I am using the internal card that came with laptop and am not even tied into the town at the time. The only time I can access into the town is when I am using going through the verizon card and use my password.
 I also am never uploading iany information from laptop into town main frame. I only copy from town mainframe and update files on my harddrive in laptop
                                   Thanks  
 

[mason55]

to Soybean

 No one else in our department has a laptop and we are the only one using the verizon. Now there may be other departments using verizon cards (thats due to town contract) but this is our department and we are charged for our indivdual department. The program that we use when we are tied into mainframe is only specific to our department and one can not go to another departments program by going through our program

[BC_Programmer]

Is what they say true? Can someone go from my laptop and get into the mainframe of the town when I am using the internal card that came with laptop and am not even tied into the town at the time. The only time I can access into the town is when I am using going through the verizon card and use my password.
 I also am never uploading iany information from laptop into town main frame. I only copy from town mainframe and update files on my harddrive in laptop
                                   Thanks  
 

IT is covering their bases. a network is only as strong as the weakest link. If somebody REALLY wanted access, they could write a piece of malware, and look for a weak spot so it can go through the firewall IT has set up. they discover that somebody uses the neighboring, unsecure wireless connection to access the net at times.

Using this information, they could eventually infect your laptop with the piece of malware, which will simply wait until you have logged into the town, and send off your logon details to the malware writer. then they can log on and access the town.


basically; while the situation is highly improbable, leaving that attack vector open for hackers can be a huge security risk in the event of a disgruntled employee looking for revenge or a homeowner tired of paying property taxes...

[soybean]

Do you know what IT would need to change in order for you to access the network via your built-in wireless adapter?  I would think nothing, that the change would have to be in your laptop, but I may be wrong. 

This is still a question in my mind.  How would using the built-in wireless adapter, as opposed to the Verizon card, impact security?  If the Verizon connection is set for WPA encryption, why can't that be setup in a connection using the built-in wireless adapter?

[BC_Programmer]

well, I believe they want to connect to a different access point  then that which is intended

I am a town employee and am having a tiff with IT department. Have a town laptop that has both a verizon card and an internal one that came with dell laptop. Have recently asked to have the ability to go through dell system to pick up signal in court building. This is due to verizon card being to slow and getting dropped.

at least, that is how I read it. If this is in fact simply a question of choosing the adapter to use in the same situation then IT needs to get their seams straight, or something, and actually learn about the technology that they are dealing with.

[michaewlewis]

It seems to me like the IT staff is very small, inexperienced, or very paranoid from the NT days. The City I work at has an IT staff of 10-12 people and since they have so many people, each being an expert in their position, they can handle securing the system and allowing remote access. If your IT staff only has a few positions, it may be a bigger security risk since they don't have the combined expertise or as many eyes watching the system. But, whatever their size, they know what the system can handle better than you do, and all you should do is ask the question if it can be done and if not, put in a request that they find a way to implement it.