InsideTech

I'll start by stating that I am a Programmer / Database Manager where as the person I report to is a glorified tech support / hardware technician.  Prior to my employement the company I work for outsourced 100% of it's IT.

My "boss" was hired approximately 1 year after myself. Since then the only IT related work we outsource is our Networking and Citrix issues, which is what my "boss" was hired to handle.

Recently he was attempting to install some updates on one of our servers that serviced our web filter.  Upon implementing the update he quickly realized that our web filter was no longer operating properly.

In order to fix this he just reinstalled the filter but lost all of the rules and exception that we had previously applied because he forgot to back them up. Now he is having people coming to him constantly requesting access to certain sites.

Today one of the owners who is allowed near full access to anything on the internet mentioned that he could not get to certain sites. My boss argued that he had added him to the proper group and claimed that the owner must be mistaken.

Upon verifying that the owner was indeed correct and was still being blocked, my boss was at a loss on how to grant him the access he desired.

The owner being frustrated by this asked if there was a way to temporarily get around this filter so that he could access the information he was looking for.

My boss protested swearing up and down that our web filter was impenetrable and there is no way around it.  The owner frustrated left our office.

A few minutes later I went to see the owner, I pulled up internet explorer, and typed in www.hidemyass.com which is a free web proxy.

Apparently he was not wise enough to block these types of sites which provided a very nice work around for the owner who was very pleased after I dispelled his fears of this being a potential problem, by explaining that I would be showing my boss how to block said sites once he was able to once again successfully manage the permissions within our web filter.