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Corralling Wayward Tech
Williams says that technically network "sniffers" could put the kibosh on most rogue IT. After all, they can alert IT whenever new assets are plugged into the network. Fancier versions can even disable new assets until they've been cleared by IT. But in reality, a lot of CIOs who install network intrusion detection software don't use it properly, Williams says, much like a homeowner who puts in a fancy security system but rarely turns it on.
CIOs who have had to deal with rogues say they first try to see things from the employee's point of view. "If you get confrontational, all you're going to get is a lot of static," says Dennis Roell, a CIO who discovered three years ago that his engineering department was trying to automate his company's warehouse without telling him. "It's not personal. They had a need. They tried to fill it. They're trying to do their job."
Roell works for Betts USA Inc., a privately held manufacturer of toothpaste tubes in Florence, Ky. Roell is Betts' one-man IT department, serving about 150 employees. Roell found out about the warehouse plan when the shipping department called to say a controller had arrived, followed shortly by a call from the head of engineering, who couldn't make the system work.
The stealth project started when engineers tried to solve a problem on their own: Tiny parts, from toothpaste caps worth pennies to $10,000-a-pop controllers, were getting lost in the warehouse's giant room. The engineers' solution was to place the parts in trays, stack the trays in three 20-foot towers, and use a robotic arm to retrieve and replace the trays.
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