But it needs to be a balance. IT policy that costs tremendous amounts of time and resources just isn't viable. Decisions need to be made such that it's possible for people to do their work AND safety concerns are address; and _both_ of them need to compromise some.
As a simplified example
- You have a client database that has confidential information
- You have some employees that _must_ be able to interact with the data in that database
- You don't want random programs installed on a computer <that has access to that database> to leak the information
You could lock down every computer in the company to not allow application installation. This would likely cause all kinds of problems getting work done.
You could lock down access to the database so nobody has access to it. This also causes all kinds of problems.
You could lock down access to the database to a very specific set of computers and lock down _those_ computers so additional applications cannot be installed on them. This provides something close to a complete lockdown, but with far less impact on the rest of the work.
Sure it's stupidly simple example, but it just demonstrates the idea that compromises are necessary (for all participants)