Cloning/Imaging

You two must not realize that cloning is simply copying. Copying software off a government harddrive is well, espionage if looked at it that way regardless of the purpose of copying. Hence my explanation before and why we have systems in place to make sure nobody is cloning drives. It's up to whoever is doing the punishing if they want to call it that. Working for a government facility dealing with straight politics and working for a military defense contract that also deals with classified data are two different ballparks. I mean, I can get fired if I accidentally open my camera app on my phone and the wrong person sees it. Don't have to take a picture, there's no plausible deniability.
Yeah, I understand exactly what cloning is. There's a difference between copying/cloning for a legitimate purpose and for stealing/espionage. If the person handing out the punishment can't tell the difference, they don't need to be in that position.

Regardless, I understand the method that you guys are using and so it's not a problem for your team. Even so, you can still clone a baseline of the OS with the software required without any classified data being on it for a legitimate IT purpose. Nobody in their right mind should consider that espionage. Either way, it's a moot point since you use SCCM.
 
Ours pushes the software that the machine has linked to it as well. Each asset is linked to a user. If they require a certain software to be installed they have to get approval first, a key managed in SLIM is linked to the asset, then the software is pushed to that asset over the network. If a user's HDD dies we order up a new one, a team Gdisk's it to make sure it's deader than a doornail, then it's sent to the scrapper. Plop the encrypted thumb drive into the machine and let SCCM do all the work. When it's done all the user's software will be reinstalled, user's info linked to Outlook and such automatically from AD, all licenses still matched up and good, and if we need to redo the profile that software is over the network too. Absolutely no reason for cloning here at all, so if you're caught doing it you have all eyes on you and for good reason.

I do like the processes you have in place. I'm a big fan for processes, makes IT more fun and more work :cool:

My company is creating processes weekly at the moment (big overhaul of the IT dept)

We asset our software too, per user and machines and as we are in a Citrix environment, we have great control over our assets.
 
Pardon while I interject with my own question - I have an old clonezilla image I'd like to recover files on a windows machine. I saw that clonezilla software says :
There are some limitations. As pointed out earlier, Clonezilla can't restore an image to a drive that is smaller than the original drive. It also doesn't allow for retrieving specific files in an image, it's the whole partition or nothing.

Do you think if I used a Linux VM i could mount and extract files from the clonezilla image to another local disk?
 
Pardon while I interject with my own question - I have an old clonezilla image I'd like to recover files on a windows machine. I saw that clonezilla software says :


Do you think if I used a Linux VM i could mount and extract files from the clonezilla image to another local disk?

clonezilla has multiple files (i dont think its that easy - I might be wrong)

What I tend to do is partition the Harddrive before I clone it so its small say 60/80GB then I can always restore it to a small harddrive.
 
Yeah, I understand exactly what cloning is. There's a difference between copying/cloning for a legitimate purpose and for stealing/espionage. If the person handing out the punishment can't tell the difference, they don't need to be in that position.

Regardless, I understand the method that you guys are using and so it's not a problem for your team. Even so, you can still clone a baseline of the OS with the software required without any classified data being on it for a legitimate IT purpose. Nobody in their right mind should consider that espionage. Either way, it's a moot point since you use SCCM.
Hence no cloning should be done, which is why they will raise a massive eyebrow if you're caught cloning and will investigate it. There's a difference between working the DMV or being a clerk at a courthouse and working IT for a military defense contract. If I scratch my balls I will have cameras up my ***. Considering the fact that China was able to steal or somehow acquire F35 details that required clearance to get they are on pretty high alert. Picking your nose gets questioned. Obviously both of those are highly exaggerated but just want to get a point across that you don't go out of bounds here unless you want to risk consequence. With all systems in place if you clone you WILL be questioned if the wrong person finds out. If you clone a device that's on the network they will know because now you have 2 drive S#s that match on the network. When I first came here I thought I'd be a smart *** and simply clone devices since imaging takes forever. Had an orange disk I wrote "boo" on for Ghost. Dude training me said, if I was you I'd trash that before you get caught. Last guy who cloned got walked out and fine. Being walked out is one thing, being fined like that is another and could hamper future jobs if previous employer is actually called.

To clarify further, my current position most of my machines are not on the network and I don't deal with LMI imaging only OEM. I imaged my personal asset and I sometimes image the new tablets that come in, but I usually leave that to the preferred product group. Since these OEM machines have recovery images on them I just use those. They don't monitor the extranet but I won't risk it. I'm not due to quit until June anyways.
 
Pardon while I interject with my own question - I have an old clonezilla image I'd like to recover files on a windows machine. I saw that clonezilla software says :


Do you think if I used a Linux VM i could mount and extract files from the clonezilla image to another local disk?
This is why I use Acronis for home use. It has a better GUI and doesn't have similar restrictions. Some people swear by Clonezilla, but I'm lazy and use Acronis if I ever need to clone.
 
This is why I use Acronis for home use. It has a better GUI and doesn't have similar restrictions. Some people swear by Clonezilla, but I'm lazy and use Acronis if I ever need to clone.

Can it encrypt the clone? If so I'll give it a try. It's the only reason I use clone zilla is for the encryption
 
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