Comment by samuel
15 days ago
I agree with the sentiment, but I think it's a pretty naive view of the issue. Companies will want all info they can in case some of their workers does something illegal-inappropiate to deflect the blame. That's a much more palpable risk than "local CA certificates being compromised or something like that.
And some of the arguments are just very easily dismissed. You don't want your employer to see you medical records? Why were you browsing them during work hours and using your employers' device in the first place?
TLS inspection can _never_ be implemented in a good way, you will always have cases where it breaks something and most commonly you will see very bad implementations that break most tools (e.g. it is very hard to trust a new CA because each of OS/browser/java/python/... will have their own CA store)
This means devs/users will skip TLS verification ("just make it work") making for a dangerous precedent. Companies want to protect their data? Well, just protect it! Least privilege, data minimization, etc is all good strategies for avoiding data leaking
Sure it can; it just requires endpoint cooperation, which is a realistic expectation for most corporate IT shops.
You also need some decent support + auditing. There are a couple of places to configure (e.g. setting CURL_CA_BUNDLE globally covers multiple OSS libraries) but there will be cases where someone hits one of the edge clients and tries to ignore the error, which ideally would lead to a scanner-triggered DevOps intervention. I think a fair amount of the rancor on this issue is really highlighting deeper social problems in large organizations, where a CIO should be seeing that resentment/hostility toward the security group is a bigger risk than the surface problem.
I’m all for privacy of individuals, but work network is not a public internet either.
A solution is required to limit the network to work related activities and also inspect server communications for unusual patterns.
In one example someone’s phone was using the work WiFi to “accidentally” stream 20 GB of Netflix a day.
What's the security risk of someone streaming Netflix?
There are better ways to ensure people are getting their work done that don't involve spying on them in the name of "security".
Security takes many forms, including Availability.
Having branch offices with 100 Mbps (or less!) Internet connections is still common. I’ve worked tickets where the root cause of network problems such as dropped calls ended up being due to bandwidth constraints. Get enough users streaming Spotify and Netflix and it can get in the way of legitimate business needs.
Sure, there’s shaping/qos rules and dns blocking. But the point is that some networks are no place for personal consumption. If an employer wants to use a MITM box to enforce that, so be it.
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What’s wrong with watching Netflix at work instead of working? That’s not for me to say, but I understand employers not wanting to allow it.
In Europe they prefer not to go to jail for privacy violations. It turns out most of these "communist" regulations are actually pretty great.
Does GDPR (or similar) establish privacy rights to an employee’s use of a company-owned machine against snooping by their employer? Honest question, I hadn’t heard of that angle. Can employers not install EDR on company-owned machines for EU employees?
(IANAL) I don't think there is a simple response to that, but I guess that given that the employer:
- has established a detailed policy about personal use of corporate devices
- makes a fair attempt to block work unrelated services (hotmail, gmail, netflix)
- ensures the security of the monitored data and deletes it after a reasonable period (such as 6–12 months)
- and uses it only to apply cybersecurity-related measures like virus detection, UNLESS there is a legitimate reason to target a particular employee (legal inquiry, misconduct, etc.)
I would say that it's very much doable.
Edit: More info from the Dutch regulator https://english.ncsc.nl/publications/factsheets/2019/juni/01...
It has to have a good purpose. Obviously there are a lot of words written about what constitutes a good purpose. Antivirus is probably one. Wanting to intimidate your employees is not. The same thing applies to security cameras.
Privacy laws are about the end-to-end process, not technical implementation. It's not "You can't MITM TLS" - it's more like "You can't spy on your employees". Blocking viruses is not spying on your employees. If you take the logs from the virus blocker and use them to spy on your employees, then you are spying on your employees. (Virus blockers aiming to be sold in the EU would do well not to keep unnecessary logs that could be used to spy on employees.)
Yes, at least in the Netherlands it is generally accepted that employees can use your device personally, too.
Using a device owned by your company to access your personal GMail account does NOT void your legal right to privacy.
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They can, but the list of "if..." and "it depends..." is much longer and complicated, especially when getting to the part how the obtained information may be used
Yes. GDPR covers all handling of PII that a company does. And its sort of default deny, meaning that a company is not allowed to handle (process and/or store) your data UNLESS it has a reason that makes it legal. This is where it becomes more blurry: figuring out if the company has a valid reason. Some are simple, eg. if required by law => valid reason.
GDPR does not care how the data got “in the hands of” the company; the same rules apply. Another important thing is the pricipals of GDPR. They sort of unline everything. One principal to consider here is that of data minimization. This basically means that IF you have a valid reason to handle an individuals PII, you must limit the data points you handle to exactly what you need and not more.
So - company proxy breaking TLS and logging everything? Well, the company has valid reason to handle some employee data obviously. But if I use my work laptop to access privat health records, then that is very much outside the scope of what my company is allowed handle. And logging (storing) my health data without valid reason is not GDPR compliant.
Could the company fire me for doing private stuff on a work laptop? Yes probably. Does it matter in terms of GDPR? Nope.
Edit: Also, “automatic” or “implicit” consent is not valid. So the company cannot say something like “if you access private info on you work pc the you automatically content to $company handling your data”. All consent must be specific, explicit and retractable
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