Forbidden apps found on Water Board computers, phones

They won’t be playing games anymore at the Albany Water Board.

Amazon and Netflix are out, too.

The state comptroller’s office urged the water board to ensure “only appropriate and necessary software and applications are installed on computers and mobile devices” after its audit revealed verboten gaming, shopping and streaming apps on computers and mobile devices assigned to the city entity.

“We found unnecessary software on 60 computers (97 percent) and six mobile devices (32 percent) including gaming, streaming and shopping software,” the comptroller’s office wrote in an audit of the board, which operates and maintains the city’s water and sewer systems.

The audit, conducted between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2020, was published on Friday; the city has already taken steps to solve the problem.

The comptroller’s office urged the board to disable access to app stores on all of its mobile devices and perform an inventory of apps installed on unmanaged mobile devices.

The city’s ability to track the apps being used on mobile devices was limited, the audit found.

In 2019, the city’s information technology department implemented a system to manage computers and mobile devices that would allow the system to detect newly installed apps. But the audit found that while the system managed “all computers connected to the city’s network, they do not manage mobile devices issued

prior to June 2019.”

“As a result, no application inventories are maintained for these mobile devices,” the audit stated.

The investigation found 39 mobile devices were not part of the management system. The audit team examined 19 devices and found unnecessary apps were installed for “games, shopping and movie/tv streaming applications that were not listed among the standard applications approved by the IT Department and pushed to mobile devices.”

The 145-employee Water Board currently uses

62 computers and 76 mobile devices.

“We found that 60 of the 62 computers had games, streaming, shopping and/or other nonbusiness software installed,” the audit found. “While we observed some games were only available and executable under administrative privileges and the city’s network prevented the execution of the streaming software installed, these applications could pose vulnerabilities that could be exploited.”

The Water Board did not dispute the findings of

the audit. It had already removed the apps from all devices and disabled the app stores.

All applications will now have to be approved by the commissioner of the city’s Water Department, and only the IT team will be able to install apps on computers and mobile devices.