Howdy from your friendly IT department!
Since we have a lot of new staff and things change over time, I wanted to take this opportunity to reiterate some of our IT policies.
- For security and PCI compliance reasons, you should NEVER EVER send social security numbers or credit card numbers through email. There are ZERO exceptions to this. If you find yourself wanting to, please speak to me immediately, because either you shouldn’t be doing it at all, or there is a better, secure way to accomplish what you are trying to accomplish.
- No one but SDE staff are allowed in the back areas or near server/telecom/tech equipment. If someone is coming to do work (Paul Beard from alarmnet for example) I will have preauthorized this via email to the store manager. If there is someone you don’t know asking for access to equipment, you MUST confirm with a manager first. If the manager(s) haven’t received preauthorization from me, please call me immediately.
- If you ever have to call the alarm company for assistance when arming/disarming the building, you MUST report this to me via email. I get alarm summaries every day and while it will be clear that you called, it’s not always clear why. I need people to report this to me with an explanation so I can resolve the issue.
- When reporting issues, please make sure they’re being funneled to me through a single point of contact like a manager. It does not work to have several people all reporting the same issue to me. The point of contact doesn’t necessarily need to be a manager if one is unavailable, but it does need to be just one person.
- The SDE Demo network is to be used for demo equipment on the floor only as well as Argos installations. The passwords for this network will be changing, and no longer given out. The Smalldog.com wifi will receive a higher bandwidth cap so that staff and customers can better use that.
- You must always reach out in helpdesk or via 666 after hours if K9 freezes on you or you need to force quit. It takes me moments to resolve it, and helps prevent database corruption.
Some stuff that has been working well?
I really appreciate people using the 666 extension to reach IT assistance after hours. It works really well and makes supporting you a lot easier for me.