New Job in IT - onboarding from hell

[alarmguy]

That keeps people from applying for credit on your behalf (which is good) but doesn't stop people from using your SSN for health insurance fraud, or Experien from selling your information / credit standing to other entities like insurance companies or any company trying to identify your likely net worth.

Agree but a significant part of the puzzle. It's hard to impossible to completely take over someone's identity if that person cant give your access to social security number.. This would be employment as well as some types of employment if not all.
I had to unlock my credit for homeowners insurance recently and maybe car too. Not sure about health insurance but even if fraud is committed, that is fraud by another party, as much as maybe a PITA I dont think common without full access to your credit file.

Keep in mind fraudsters easily access credit reports with 80% of the population because I think that is the number that dont bother locking their credit. So why even bother with me? When fraud in my name is committed it has to be proven it was me and I THINK that is unlikely, more involving agencies that did not require a credit review via access to my SS file...

 

[SC Maintenance]

Agree but a significant part of the puzzle. It's hard to impossible to completely take over someone's identity if that person cant give your access to social security number.. This would be employment as well as some types of employment if not all.
I had to unlock my credit for homeowners insurance recently and maybe car too. Not sure about health insurance but even if fraud is committed, that is fraud by another party, as much as maybe a PITA I dont think common without full access to your credit file.

Keep in mind fraudsters easily access credit reports with 80% of the population because I think that is the number that dont bother locking their credit. So why even bother with me? When fraud in my name is committed it has to be proven it was me and I THINK that is unlikely, more involving agencies that did not require a credit review via access to my SS file...

For sure some is better than none - but its hardly the "lock" it sounds like. Your still there product.

You can actually completely lock it if you have been a victim of Identity theft - but only for a single year.

Still goes to show you are the product and no one really cares about our security. Were you still in SC when the state tax system was hacked, and they got everyone's SSN - and the states response was to give everyone credit monitoring from some company no one ever heard of

 

[alarmguy]

For sure some is better than none - but its hardly the "lock" it sounds like. Your still there product.

You can actually completely lock it if you have been a victim of Identity theft - but only for a single year.

Still goes to show you are the product and no one really cares about our security. Were you still in SC when the state tax system was hacked, and they got everyone's SSN - and the states response was to give everyone credit monitoring from some company no one ever heard of

Yeah, I remember the SC thing and was annoying but you know what? I honestly believe the SS number of everyone in the USA is out there some place. Seems like it would be simple stuff to get them now. Let's not forget some of the biggest ones of all. Whatever agency the card users use on a nationwide level... and what about all those computers in your doctors offices and dentist offices. With over 267 million adults in the USA hackers cant possibly cover all those numbers, so they pick and choose. We really are like a fish in the sea. They cant catch them all!

I hoenstly believe the only defense as trivial as some might think, is to lock your credit. What else is there? Actually it's even more easy for many to simply scam people of their financial information. Even the most educated, smart, wealthy sometimes get tripped up.
It can be just a moment of a day, a person not thinking, many things on their mind and then bam, a text comes in, a phone call comes in, everything sounding so official and real from their financial institution, they dont hang up and look up the phone number themselves to call their bank back and bam. I say this with sadness I know of someone recently and those people are the last people on earth I thought it would happen to. I still dont know all the details, they are so embarrassed. So official that they were dealing with their financial institution.

 

[Donald]

Yesterday I was finally assigned a permanent VDI workspace. It came with a MS Teams that would only say it needs an update. Could not actually use MS Teams. I had to screw around with the Helpdesk to get that fixed.

 

[2002 Maxima SE]

Yeah, everyone's information is everywhere. There is one powerful tool to help prevent stealing your identity and its free.
Lock your credit accounts with the 3 major credit bureaus. You can also opt-out of them sharing some information.
There is another major business credit rating agency that you can freeze your information too.

This is good advice. I had mine and my family's information stolen when China hacked the Office of Personnel Management while applying for security clearance in 2013. We've frozen our information for over a decade with brief periods unfrozen for large purchases requiring a credit check. We also freeze ChexSystems which is used when applying for checking account.

 

[GMFan]

This story reminds me of why I don’t work for corporate America. I tried it once and I lasted 1 year and 9 months and it was about 1 year and 5 months too long. Otherwise I’ve worked 15 years for small (100-200 people) companies.

 

[andrew_j]

This story reminds me of why I don’t work for corporate America. I tried it once and I lasted 1 year and 9 months and it was about 1 year and 5 months too long. Otherwise I’ve worked 15 years for small (100-200 people) companies.

I work in corporate however a private owned company of 75k employees. I don’t mind it at all after two years. I like people and work. Many people here work 10,20,30 years. I met a mainframe programmer at 40 years.

 

[Donald]

I work in corporate however a private owned company of 75k employees. I don’t mind it at all after two years. I like people and work. Many people here work 10,20,30 years. I met a mainframe programmer at 40 years.

So being a computer guy in the corporate world means your system changes must go through a change control process. I understand that and agree some kind of change control is needed.

What has happened is the offshore clowns throw in changes that are minimally testes and often cause problems. They are contractors and mostly worried about billing their time.

Then IT management sees all these failed changes that caused problems and institutes a much more rigorous change control process. It takes half a day of work and approvals to get your change approved that will take 5 min to implement. Here is my beef: they make one jump over hoops to get a change approved but have done little or nothing to improve the quality of the change.

 

[rijndael]

So being a computer guy in the corporate world means your system changes must go through a change control process. I understand that and agree some kind of change control is needed.

My problem with these processes is: The people asking questions, and have approval/deny ability, have no real technical clue about the impacts. They may ask technical questions, but they are policy people who care whether you've checked the boxes and signed the doc.

They'll ask about backout plans in case of a failure ... but don't realize that it's rarely as simple as 'reverse the steps'. We have to see how it's broken, first.

 

[goblin]

So being a computer guy in the corporate world means your system changes must go through a change control process. I understand that and agree some kind of change control is needed.

What has happened is the offshore clowns throw in changes that are minimally testes and often cause problems. They are contractors and mostly worried about billing their time.

Then IT management sees all these failed changes that caused problems and institutes a much more rigorous change control process. It takes half a day of work and approvals to get your change approved that will take 5 min to implement. Here is my beef: they make one jump over hoops to get a change approved but have done little or nothing to improve the quality of the change.

At this point you have triggered my "run" detectors several times over. Why are you still there ?

 

[andrew_j]

So being a computer guy in the corporate world means your system changes must go through a change control process. I understand that and agree some kind of change control is needed.

What has happened is the offshore clowns throw in changes that are minimally testes and often cause problems. They are contractors and mostly worried about billing their time.

Then IT management sees all these failed changes that caused problems and institutes a much more rigorous change control process. It takes half a day of work and approvals to get your change approved that will take 5 min to implement. Here is my beef: they make one jump over hoops to get a change approved but have done little or nothing to improve the quality of the change.

Our small offshore team is top tier talent in my specific group. 1/2 day on top is normal however can be pleasant to pulling teeth.