I work hospitality IT and this has been an absolute nightmare. I think I have got 30 minutes sleep in the past 24 hours, and it’s looking like that is going to continue for the next week or so. Days off are straight out the window.
They managed to brick PCs so badly that we have to individually triage servers and endpoints because we can’t even get PCs up long enough to deploy the fix*. Lord help if your endpoints are bitlocker encrypted (ours are) as that just adds another fun step. Good chance that you won’t have all the recovery keys in that case.
*The fix being literally just deleting the malware they uploaded to our PCs. It takes seconds but the song and dance of getting to that file to delete it is way more involved.
It was. We have basically 100% recovered at this point, but not without exhaustive work from our teams.
I am currently making sure that every property gives their IT proper overtime pay and a vacation. Then I will be doing the same for myself. Hopefully this will also be incentive for properties to actually hire enough IT workers.
The only reason we get that is I have the good fortune to be in a high enough position I can push for it. I have no illusions that the higher-ups would okay it if they weren’t being forced to. Even then I had to make calls to every office to make sure they were actually following through.
Well, it’s not your fault Windows is dogshit. I refuse to build, repair, admin or maintain any system running a non-FOSS operating system. 16 years later and it’s still the best professional decision I ever made. Remind your employer this is their fault and the inevitable outcome for using unsecurable spyware on their machines.
It’s a big multinational so those decisions are way up the food chain from me, but my reports and my bosses have all been saying this for years. Hopefully now they listen to us.
I work hospitality IT and this has been an absolute nightmare. I think I have got 30 minutes sleep in the past 24 hours, and it’s looking like that is going to continue for the next week or so. Days off are straight out the window.
They managed to brick PCs so badly that we have to individually triage servers and endpoints because we can’t even get PCs up long enough to deploy the fix*. Lord help if your endpoints are bitlocker encrypted (ours are) as that just adds another fun step. Good chance that you won’t have all the recovery keys in that case.
*The fix being literally just deleting the malware they uploaded to our PCs. It takes seconds but the song and dance of getting to that file to delete it is way more involved.
That sounds absolutely brutal.
It was. We have basically 100% recovered at this point, but not without exhaustive work from our teams.
I am currently making sure that every property gives their IT proper overtime pay and a vacation. Then I will be doing the same for myself. Hopefully this will also be incentive for properties to actually hire enough IT workers.
At least there’s overtime pay and vacation to look forward to. In the US, most people will be forced to do overtime with no compensation.
The only reason we get that is I have the good fortune to be in a high enough position I can push for it. I have no illusions that the higher-ups would okay it if they weren’t being forced to. Even then I had to make calls to every office to make sure they were actually following through.
Lucky you’re in a position to actually make that happen.
Well, it’s not your fault Windows is dogshit. I refuse to build, repair, admin or maintain any system running a non-FOSS operating system. 16 years later and it’s still the best professional decision I ever made. Remind your employer this is their fault and the inevitable outcome for using unsecurable spyware on their machines.
It’s a big multinational so those decisions are way up the food chain from me, but my reports and my bosses have all been saying this for years. Hopefully now they listen to us.
I feel ya. I’ve had pretty limited success getting companies to get rid of bad software.
“Can’t you… just… umm… patch it or something???”
So glad windows isn’t my problem. But I’m sorry for your stress and loss of sleep, mate.