All,
First, I apologize because this is much more of an IT question than a coding question, but I come from an IT/desktop support background with a particular interest in security.
How are larger, academic libraries securing your employee-used, shared workstations -- specifically, the circulation desk machines and the back-end, ILL scanning stations? I have been trying mightily for a few years to eliminate the shared-password generic accounts because they present a real security/privacy concern. I am running into some real road-blocks though, and I'm wondering if anyone here has found solutions that work.
Having viewed the chaotic state of the circulation desk with the constant churn of employees using the stations, I have conceded that it is better to use a generic login than to have folks log in/out constantly.
The ILL employees who do a lot of scanning don't have the rapid-fire turnover at their workstations, but they (or their manager) is insisting on a generic login because the scans need to be saved in a specific, network location and Acrobat has no mechanism to set the default save location for all users. (I hate Adobe!) When we have tried using personal logins, folks forget, don't notice, or don't know about watching that the PDFs are saved in the proper location, and those scans have to be redone by someone else or are inaccessible within the particular employee's private user profile until they return to work (which could be days-weeks with student employees).
In both cases, users still need to sign into services as themselves (the LSP -- Alma --, scheduling, wiki documentation, ILLiad, etc.), so I'm not really sure what the security advantages are with the generic account (especially for ILL scanning). I've had to push settings to prevent the browsers (Edge, Chrome and FireFox) from saving passwords. I also have automated scripts running to regularly blow away the MS Teams configuration to prevent users from using it as someone else. (Teams "helpfully" remembers credentials for one-click login even after logging out of it and rebooting.) I have not been able to find a way to do the same with MS Office, so I have been forced to uninstall it completely. Otherwise, everyone who uses it while logged onto the computer with the generic account is signed into/owns all the M365 documents as the user who first used it (and had to sign into M365).
The lack of Microsoft Office is the particular issue that I'm being pressed on to prompt me to post this. I should add that I can't use device licenses for M365 (where login/registration isn't required) because they only work with Azure Active Directory which we do not have. What are you all doing? I've been considering trying to set circ desk systems up as mulit-app, auto-login kiosks so at least we don't need to share the generic password, but the other problems still remain.
Any feedback is appreciated.
Thanks,
Erich
--
Erich Hammer Head of Library Systems
[log in to unmask] University Libraries
518-442-3891 University @ Albany
"Faith is the unflagging determination to remain ignorant
in the face of any and all evidence that you're ignorant."
-- Shaun Mason
