Company laptops protecting schematics etc

[Faringdon]

Hi,
For the sake of company security, our company's laptops are modified so that
its slow to open and close folders. This is so that staff cant quickly go in and out of loads
of folders and see all the documents/schematics etc. (and quickly copy them, what have you)
So when you click a folder, its a good 4 to 5  seconds before anything happens. -It just hangs.
The thing is, i dont pose a threat to this company, and so do you know how to
get rid of this feature.?

I appreciate that its a common thing in many companys, and have known it multiple times before.
ie stopping mass "folder hopping"....which is deemed to be a "scally" seeking to steal Company IP.

I have split my work up into loads of folders and its taking ages to go between them whilst working.

Stuff like renaming a folder also takes ages.

It is windows 11 PRO, and the laptop is a HP Probook, 16GB RAM

[ataradov]

You are the only person that poses the threat.

This is not a security feature, your computer just slow and/or full of viruses.

[SiliconWizard]

That's unfortunate.

[jonpaul]

FTTS

Ask  your so called "company" IT,  violation of agreements?
Suggest that you Return the  company PC and do not use for personal use.
Buy a new laptop!!EU 300..800

j

[hans]

If this is a serious "security enhancement", then I don't think IT understands their threat model. Bad actors will just run scripts to index and later download files, if needed.
Don't underestimate how much data a bad actor can grab if it goes undetected. Even if it only downloads 1 file per minute, it can still grab 40k 5k files in 2 weeks, business hours only.
edit: Same goes with uploading: 10kB/s sounds like taking forever, but let it run in background 24/7, and it would be leaking >11GB in 2 weeks.

I think this is an ill perceivement. It's either your laptop needs a serious clean up, or your IT servers needs a serious upgrade

[tom66]

More nonsense.  Company laptops are usually encrypted as per Cyber Essentials requirements so if they are lost/stolen they are useless for data without the password.  No more civil servants leaving laptops on trains with 600,000 people's data on them.  If they're slow it's just crap hardware/software config, not security.  If you wanted to steal company IP you could easily do it with a script as @hans points out.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/jun/12/defence.terrorism

[Haenk]

Maybe you have some linked documents pointing to a file server. That really craps out Windows.
Or indexing running, or a virus scan running.
(Assuming that your computer is not that old, running Win11 and has enough free storage and enough ram.)

[jzx]

If they are shared folders, perhaps you suffer a bad network connection, the computer gets the file only after many retries and it is slow. If the company wants to limit you, it puts passwords, permissions etc.
Also, if you want to slowly copy all, know that the administrator can audit the files and know who has copied what. That depends on level of paranoia, but if the data are important, they do it, o more.

[soldar]

What a strange thread.

[RandallMcRee]

I have noticed slow file operations on Windows since 1985. They have never solved these issues:

        google "why are windows folders opening so slow?"

There are a host of possible issues, most are benign. I often found it was the background search and indexing task...turn it off. But as a little reading shows there are also problems caused by incorrect network configuration, corrupt files, large files, bad security settings, on and on.

Use windows performance analyzer to actually see what your PC is doing. If the cause turns out to be something that you cannot turn off due to security settings then you can start blaming company IT.

As pointed out, you should never mix personal and private computers. Ever. When moving from one job to another just throw that company laptop in a box and forget-about-it.

[ArdWar]

I just like to imagine that somewhere in this world there's an IT guy that legitimately thought the solution to rampant data theft is to purposely slow down file read access, tanking employee productivity, wasting company hours, and the managers are okay with that.

Like, WTF??

[Gyro]

The usual Faringdon / treez utter crap! Last week it was LTSpice doing it     https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eda/ltspice-not-responding/

[SiliconWizard]

To be fair though, it may be due to the OP's Windows account being tied to the company's domain (I don't remember how it's called in Windows's lingo, but it's roaming profile stuff) and the company's network infrastructure being very poorly maintained/designed.

[Brumby]

It is windows 11 PRO, and the laptop is a HP Probook, 16GB RAM

Maybe.  My guess: Running Windows Vista on a 486.

[langwadt]

last week you were talking about selling your company, if you are the owner just go tell IT to fix it ...

[IanB]

To be fair though, it may be due to the OP's Windows account being tied to the company's domain (I don't remember how it's called in Windows's lingo, but it's roaming profile stuff) and the company's network infrastructure being very poorly maintained/designed.

True. If you have a roaming profile, and your files are not locally synced already, and you have a slow network connection, then things might be slow. This is nothing to do with security, and everything to do with poorly configured infrastructure.

[Psi]

Yes, roaming profiles can get annoying.   (if that is the issue)
Especially on slow internet connections.

But afaik they are still local folders, just auto sync to the server, so I wouldn't have expected slow browsing of folders.

[temperance]

last week you were talking about selling your company, if you are the owner just go tell IT to fix it ...

I really wonder why people are still responding to all his posts. Just stop feeding the troll.

[tooki]

last week you were talking about selling your company, if you are the owner just go tell IT to fix it ...

I really wonder why people are still responding to all his posts. Just stop feeding the troll.

He makes me think that eevblog needs to introduce a “ratio” requirement between questions asked and answered.

He’s started literally hundreds of threads, with nearly exclusively inane and/or insane questions, and essentially never responds in a thread he didn’t start himself. (I found only one example, but I’m not going to check every single one of the thousands of messages he’s posted.) Complete, 100% leech.

[rsjsouza]

Every court has a jester...

Plot twist: Faringdon is the IT manager and is pitching his idea of slowing down access to files and folders in order to improve the safety of their company, but it is afraid of taking the plunge and would see how his coworkers would react.

Comparing to several of his other posts and ideas presented to this forum prior to this thread, I don't think this is too far fetched...

[tom66]

Maybe I'm a bad person but it's fun to reply to these posts.  The inane bullshit makes me feel more sane.

[Zero999]

last week you were talking about selling your company, if you are the owner just go tell IT to fix it ...

I really wonder why people are still responding to all his posts. Just stop feeding the troll.

Because he likes every post and people enjoy seeing the number go up?

Regarding the question: slow laptop for security: the only thing I can think of is some antivirus software can slow down file operations, if it's scanning each file. A solid state, hard drive, more RAM and perhaps changing the AV software might help.

[Gyro]

I really wonder why people are still responding to all his posts. Just stop feeding the troll.

Because we like to get thanked - see, even you got thanked! 

[coppercone2]

get a hardware job where the # of folders is proportional to the # of projects and that # is kept low because $

you want me to spend all that time documenting that thing ? we aint gonna get no where quick, boss

Dealing with corporate IT for data-management positions is a full time pain in the ass job. they pay you for the struggle. you think the guy that hired you ain't know how fuckin painful dealing with docs is? 

[jpyeron]

If I was not married, the time I would spend tilting at this windmill.