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Cydrome Leader

In sci.electronics.repair wrote:
On Thu, 21 Aug 2014 18:19:18 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
wrote:

In sci.electronics.repair wrote:
On Wed, 20 Aug 2014 23:51:40 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
wrote:

In sci.electronics.repair Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Cydrome Leader wrote:

In sci.electronics.repair Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Don Y wrote:

On 8/20/2014 9:21 AM, rickman wrote:
Most of the Kensington devices that I have seen are easily
thwarted (shims, picks, etc. -- e.g., a thin sheet of CARDBOARD,
fragment of a soda can, etc!).

I understand how ALL locks work: locks keep honest people honest.
Period.

All sorts of things are possible. A Kensington lock deters a large
percentage of would be thieves. It is a practical solution that provides
a reasonable amount of protection for a low price and a minimum
inconvenience. If you have a $1500 laptop and want to eliminate any
chance of it being stolen, you can always keep it in your safe deposit
box.

They keep folks who need a "gentle reminder" that "Thou Shalt Not Steal"
from stepping over the line. Most "protection devices" have obvious
flaws or simple exploits. E.g., many homes have sliding doors that
are installed improperly. Your neighbors won't exploit it to enter
your home while you are out -- but, a thief would be glad to do so!

Reasons/motivations for an actual "theft" vary.

When I was in school, picking locks was "just something you did".
No big deal.

A friend used to wander the basements of the school methodically
picking EVERY lock -- leaving the doors, etc. UNlocked when their
occupants arrived in the morning. To him, it was just "practice".

Apparently, one day, he decided to do more than just pick the locks,
no doubt encouraged by how *easy* it was. He was gone a few days
later.

They bragged about how secure the pushbutton locks were at a defense
plant where I worked. I laughed and told them they were useless. They
quoted the number of possible combinations. I shrugged, looked at the
lock, bunched five buttons and opened the door. They demanded to know
who gave me the combination. I smiled and told them, Your cleaning
service. I was told, in no uncertain terms that they were not given the
codes. Then I pointed out that they were not cleaning the face plates
so All I had to do was look at one of the locks to know the code. They
didn't believe me, so I walked down the hall, opening one restricted
area after another. The next day, the chrome bezels were clean and they
looked like they had been waxed. ;-)

simplex type locks are pretty hillarious, expecially when the codes can be
entered in any order, or just by hitting all the right buttons in any
order.

These had to be in the right order, but that was no problem since
each time someone pushed a button, they wiped some crud off their
fingertips. You just punched them in order of the descending crud.

One facility I worked at had some "Department of Defense" certifed keypads
(whatever that means, if anything at all, I was never told a certification
level of spec they adhered to) that were fairly smart.

The keypad had LED displays inside each swith position in the form or a
telephone keypad that could only be read at sitting in a wheelchair height
at which they were mounted. The digits at each button always changed so it
was not possible to watching somebody enter a code and then repeat it as
you could not see what they were keying in. Wear on the keypads was kept
even too, and funny business with figuring out which keys were pressed
last was useless.

Those got disconnected and they went back to keycards for some reason.

Key cards allow security to maintain records of entry into an area.
All of the areas where I work (everywhere but the lobby is "secured")
has card access, both in and out. I swipe the card at least forty
times a day.

They are good for auditing, but are only one part of security in general.
We have doors get just don't close or get propped open, but have no alarms
so nobody investigates. Nothing special here but an office, so who cares.

Every one I've seen has a door-open sensor. Like anything, it depends
on what you do with it how useful it is. At my CPOE, any door that's
propped open will be investigated in minutes (and we don't have any
security clearance issues).

It's good to keep the security people running around. My issue with people
too lazy to even close is door is you know they never lock the screen of
their computers, and have to have laptops and leave them all over the
place. I used to send out "lunch is on me" group emails from unsecure
computers. It was suggested I just start typing letters of resignation to
HR instead.

I did once get a call from corp. security at a telecom site as somehow I
tripped an alarm. I had to wave at a camera and rescan my badge and only
the were they able to clear the alarm. I'm still not sure how they got my
cell phone #.

That's easy. They know who you are by your badge (you did badge in).
Once they know the name, finding a phone number is easy. I'm sure
your phone number is in company records.

In this case, it wasn't a cell number I gave them or the place I was
working for. This was in the era when people wore belts with multiple
pages and cell phones. Anyways, they were awake and did their job
properly.