Firstly, I meant FF and Chrome, not sharing apps. Regardless, I would understand, vaguely understand, that limitation in the DoD, well not really actually, but 99.99% of us aren't working in the DoD or health are we? 99.99% of us are working in situations where the data is highly specific and only useful in an incredibly targeted intrusion that fairly trivial social engineering could access and a much greater attack vector is being exposed in poorly written web apps exposing entire DBs to the world if only anyone could be bothered to hack your local estate agent. But they can't be bothered.

Stopping people installing Chrome's not going to change that and you're utterly delusional to think otherwise.

Pretending otherwise is pandering to the security theatre that is gripping our country at the moment. If someone wanted into your DB, they will get in. Deep down you know that. And Chrome's not going to be how they do it. No, an employee, someone, somewhere, will give them access. People are you weak point, not the systems. Couple that with massively weak internal controls usually exposing your data to everyone in your company. They might have to sleep with them, they might have to hire a prostitute or something crazy like that, but they'll get in. Sneakers style! China's recent spate of 0-day's has also proven that a determined attacker will get in.

Or maybe you'll 'lose' another laptop.

Secondly, I am a professional programmer. Not an enthusiast. Grow up with your childish name calling.

Thirdly, I have also worked for a wide variety of companies as a drone, a lot, as I temped my way through Uni. At the time in 2000-2003 I didn't realise that being able to program was special. If only I could go back and tell me I would be far richer. Almost in their entirety the IT departments have been incompetent. This was before they even thought of blocking websites. I could regale you with tales of negative gas readings due to estimated bills not resulting in credits to customers at one of the largest energy suppliers in the UK. I could tell you of being given the entire delivery DB of schedules of one of the three collection cash delivery agencies in the UK 3 months before they were hit by a series of robberies just after those deliveries and never, ever getting an interview by the police.

Fourth, I have been in contact with hundreds of client IT departments the majority of which couldn't tell their ass from their elbow IT-wise, who didn't know that their servers had become zombies mailers or that something as simple as installing SQL server on a DC was a big no-no. One company I worked had the bright idea of making their programmers first-line support. Eye-opening.

Fifth, I have met hundreds of programmers in my time, there are only about 5 I would actually trust to program my toaster, let alone my heart monitor. Most programmers will only have a vague clue who Linus Torvals is. And the sysadmins I've met are often people not good enough to become programmers. Those rare other kind are like finding a diamond! I was chatting to a programmer friend I occasionally go for a pint and a curry with yesterday who works for a 100 person IT department in the NHS and no-one there knows what Github is. Or who Scott Hansleman or Scott Gu were, even though they work entirely in .Net, mainly with web apps.

There are a lot of people in IT at the moment who just do not belong here. We're still in the crazy "quack" phrase of our profession where it's hard to tell someone good from someone espousing nonsense.

In here, in HN, there's a solace, so many people actually know what they're talking about. It was refreshing when I first found it 4 years ago, and sometimes I forget.

Don't forget. Never forget that at the moment most IT people suck. If there's someone detached from reality, it's you.

tl;dr Letting your users install Chrome or FF is froody. You're talking to a battle hardened veteran, n00b.