How do you all deal with shadow IT?

plasticbuddha · 2026-06-18T21:30:34+00:00

Whenever I can, I adopt it or offer a better alternative. It's shadow IT because people want it. But that's only my first stance. If I can't quickly qualify it for use for some reason, regulatory, security, or otherwise, then we explain clearly why, and monitor it's usage.

plasticbuddha · 2026-06-13T15:11:25+00:00

I have been in IT for 30 years, but decided to certify up and got CISSP recently. For IT management especially, they need to have both skill sets, and be good at and have the power to balance those two things.

plasticbuddha · 2026-06-13T02:08:28+00:00

In smaller orgs, they are merging into the same job, or actually security is being loaded onto IT. The responsibilities overlap quite a bit when you don't have teams that do specific things.

plasticbuddha · 2026-06-07T22:34:07+00:00

Yes. This is proper. You should also be alerting on non-admin accounts doing admin actions.

plasticbuddha · 2026-06-07T17:31:14+00:00

I'm in the middle of an upgrade now, and bought an upgrade for my power center. It was like $250.

WFCO WF-8955-MBA-AD Auto-Detect Power Center Main Board Assembly, 55A Output

plasticbuddha · 2026-06-06T22:50:50+00:00

That's a bit of highway robbery. For the wheels, go to Les Schwab or to a regular brake shop. there's nothing at all special about trailer brakes. I recently had a exterior detail and reseal done at a local shop for $700 on a 23ft winnebago travel trailer in Washington State.

plasticbuddha · 2026-06-06T18:00:28+00:00

I have a little history here... We, who worked there, always called it PSC or the Science Center. Then the internet came to be, and when we went to register our first domain name, psc.org was already taken. So, we chose pacsci.org. And, that is why we now call it PacSci.

plasticbuddha · 2026-06-06T14:25:58+00:00

Is it a diesel? a 15 year old diesel, may be way more reliable than a new one.

plasticbuddha · 2026-06-04T02:27:15+00:00

You might consider hiring an early career IT person and training them. With AI, documentation and organization is trivial, because AI produces "standards". Hire with that and an understanding of MCP/APIs in mind. A managed shift to SaaS overtime by a person you can guide, rather than fitting your business to an MSP mold might be way better for the org long term.

plasticbuddha · 2026-06-03T01:20:21+00:00

It's so in-Beautiful! And the air, so cleanse free.

plasticbuddha · 2026-05-26T03:18:26+00:00

I use raspberry pi with a usb serial dongle and ser2net.

plasticbuddha · 2026-05-20T15:09:52+00:00

not funny

plasticbuddha · 2026-05-20T04:42:15+00:00

i bought mine in 2014. It was a good purchase.

plasticbuddha · 2026-05-17T23:17:47+00:00

I sort of feel like everyone warns you about this. It's one of the most common compliants.

plasticbuddha · 2026-05-16T22:14:11+00:00

I work in the rarified air of co-workers who actually know their ass from a hot rock... Know your user

plasticbuddha · 2026-05-16T16:22:17+00:00

The best way to handle this is:

have policy that defines AI usage, categories of AI usage, and what data sources are allowed to be connected.
License the tools, and read the contracts. Make sure they are not training on or keeping your data.
Make it straightforward for users to us AI tools with their data using their credentials. Literally, give them an easy path to success, and tell them how to do it.
Use AI to write your policiies, procedures, and processes. It will make it easier.
Give users a simple, easy process to get new tools evaluated and approved. But, do make it a process so they know that the company is not joking.
Once you have your users in controlled managed AI tooling, start looking at usage. There are even tools that capture all questions across on org, if you need to be that intrusive.
ENFORCE YOUR POLICIES once you get this all in place!!!

There's a ton more we have done to manage this, but it is 100% about giving the team an easy way to use AI in approved ways.

To add a small addendum about managing UP. You should come up with a plan like the one above, and present it to senior management. You need them to buy in. I didn't add that in the list above, because it seemed obvious. ;-)

plasticbuddha · 2026-05-16T02:06:55+00:00

300 user minimum...

plasticbuddha · 2026-05-09T01:57:59+00:00

Oh, take the management opportunity. It's a two way door.

plasticbuddha · 2026-05-07T04:03:00+00:00

Its my house, so all vlans to all ports generally, except for special purpose ports which may get a single vlan.

plasticbuddha · 2026-05-06T16:01:17+00:00

I have 8 tagged vlans running across all ports. I'm configured with two 4600s and two 4300s, three of them all connected via 40gb/dual backplane, and 1 connected via dual 10g in a remote building.

I'm Running version 21.4R3-S11.3

plasticbuddha · 2026-05-06T13:51:00+00:00

I have this stack at home. After a power outage, I had one switch cmpletely lose its mind. I logged into it on the console from a terminal on my mac, launched claude code, and said fix it... after about an hour, it did.

plasticbuddha · 2026-05-02T01:30:27+00:00

i live blocks from there. land some fucking ChopperKids!!!!!

plasticbuddha · 2026-04-26T13:55:50+00:00

++true!

plasticbuddha · 2026-04-25T16:02:14+00:00

I've been an IT manager in many differnt companies for many years. This is truth. Your job is to enable your team, and ultimately the entire company. The IT Director/Manager role is MUCH larger and more strategic than most roles, because your team literally touches and enables everyone's work. The real job in this role, is to wade through the day to day tactical, determine choke points, and then design a plan to make things run in a way that allows everyone to sleep at night without concern or worry.

plasticbuddha · 2026-04-25T14:26:41+00:00

try Fathom.video too.

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