I work for a University and I laugh so hard every time I hear this.
For the people that say this should be an IT policy issue let me explain to you how academic people work.
Professors and researchers are KINGS and QUEENS. You CANNOT tell them what to do, nor can you force ANYTHING on them.
The only exception are the engineering professors for obvious reasons they have their shit together. Other faculty are just plain morons and think they can do everything on their own.
Professors and researchers get to buy and chose their own laptops, and they can do whatever they want. Unless they fall under the administration side, IT cannot tell them what to put on or do with the laptop.
Just to get off my chess I'll tell you one of many stories. A faculty member brought in his school paid laptop, and he obviously used it for personal reasons. This is his main work laptop with all his data (again we can't force them to follow our policy since they are not administration), so he has no backups or any antivirus scans.
His laptop had over 5000 viruses when I ran a virus scan. This is no joke, I have the screen shot somewhere. I refuse to clean and told him I will rebuild it. Which I did and put all this files back. I explain to him exactly what I did in an email, what he would lose (software etc) and he was okay with it, remember I have this in email. Only when he agreed did I go ahead with the rebuild.
He comes back and writes an email to the department chair that I had broke his laptop and had to rebuild it. Then I lost his software which he paid for and wants the school to pay for it back.
I almost kicked him in he face even if it got me fired. Luckily my boss stepped in and took care of it.
For the people that say this should be an IT policy issue let me explain to you how academic people work.
Professors and researchers are KINGS and QUEENS. You CANNOT tell them what to do, nor can you force ANYTHING on them.
The only exception are the engineering professors for obvious reasons they have their shit together. Other faculty are just plain morons and think they can do everything on their own.
Professors and researchers get to buy and chose their own laptops, and they can do whatever they want. Unless they fall under the administration side, IT cannot tell them what to put on or do with the laptop.
Just to get off my chess I'll tell you one of many stories. A faculty member brought in his school paid laptop, and he obviously used it for personal reasons. This is his main work laptop with all his data (again we can't force them to follow our policy since they are not administration), so he has no backups or any antivirus scans.
His laptop had over 5000 viruses when I ran a virus scan. This is no joke, I have the screen shot somewhere. I refuse to clean and told him I will rebuild it. Which I did and put all this files back. I explain to him exactly what I did in an email, what he would lose (software etc) and he was okay with it, remember I have this in email. Only when he agreed did I go ahead with the rebuild.
He comes back and writes an email to the department chair that I had broke his laptop and had to rebuild it. Then I lost his software which he paid for and wants the school to pay for it back.
I almost kicked him in he face even if it got me fired. Luckily my boss stepped in and took care of it.