IT found out when they disabled a library (DAO) because "cryptolockers" could use it, only to break almost every single process at my organization. The IT director was pissed, but he had to reenable the library because everything ground to a halt.
Bonus points: he told my boss that VBA macros were bad because hackers could use them to take over the mouse and click on things.(Edit: I also distinctly remember the IT director accusing me of being a hacker when he found out I was using VBA.)
I still wake up in a cold sweat with nightmares that something broke in that system. The VBA editor in Office is an absolute nightmare when it comes to debugging. No version control either.
Just do a Save As..."Mission Critical Finance Model v2.xlsm", then "Mission Critical Finance Model v3.xlsm", then "Mission Critical Finance Model v3a (temp with changes for Jim).xlsm" and then "Mission Critical Finance Model v4 (maybe-trying to merge 3a back-DO NOT USE).xlsm" and so on...
My main database was up to version 2051 by the time I left.
The class I have nightmares about is the "compile and backup" class I wrote, that decompiled the database, appended the date to each file, compared all of the non-data and non-binary components, recompiled the database with the most recent versions, and then made sure every database was linked to the most recent versions of other databases.
Why did I decompile everything? Well I learned that unless the file size changed markedly, the deduplication feature of the file replication system that our company used assumed the files were the same. Well Access databases can stay the same size for a long time unless you run a compact and repair on them. So I lost several weeks of work more than once because the system decided that an older version and a newer version of a database were the same.
Without that stupid "feature" I would have just had the production Access file be named Access-prod.accdb and updated it each day.
I honestly have so many nightmares about that job I'm intentionally doing easy work until I can convince myself that files don't magically delete themselves without a trace and administrators aren't deliberately evil.
The foremost issue was that the timeserver was virtualized, and drifted to an unbelievable degree. This issue was compounded by the fact that we used citrix virtual machines for some applications, and our local desktops for other applications.
The latter issue wasn't a problem until they moved the citrix servers from an on-site server room to cloud provider about 40 miles away. (I think this is when the timeserver became virtualized as well) At that point the latency between the citrix sessions and the local desktops was such that I could create a document on the file share, edit it on my local desktop, close it, save it, and then open it on the remote desktop and it would lock the replication from my computer and lose all my work.
My department managed to wipe out the changes every other department had made to the yearly budget workbook because of this interaction. Of course part of the issue was using Excel as a shared document, but that issue was hugely compounded by the fact that our network infrastructure was bananas.
For instance, building access databases using the Microsoft recommended separate front-end/back-end files, with each individual user having their own front-end file actually managed to make the issue occur more frequently. If you used a single access database file on a shared drive the issue was substantially less likely to occur. I can only imagine this is because the dedupe was postponed until everyone was done using the file, and the file was more likely to substantially change in size when multiple people were using it.
The IT director had an incredibly fragile ego, and he attacked anyone who challenged him in any way. He hired a truck driver (with absolutely no IT experience) to work the IT help desk, which I assume was because he wanted a sycophant. He reported me to HR any time I did anything he didn't understand or which perceived to be a challenge of his power. He reported me to HR for using open-source software, with a description of open source software that made it sound like Wikipedia meets programming, and only used by hackers. He also reported me to HR after he heard I called our IT situation Kafkaesque.
As far as nightmares go, that might have been my favorite, because my defense was literally "it is Kafkaesque, and I can prove it." I managed to successfully convince HR that the IT situation was Kafkaesque using examples from Kafka's work, whose response was "well there isn't anything we can do about it, but you aren't wrong."
The sensible thing would have been to leave as soon as possible, but I really liked the field I was in, which was kind of specialized. Looking back I stayed way too long.
But thanks for the horror story. What a nightmare.
Stories like that, and my experience, tell me that IT staff in large companies and institutions ensure everything works by making it unusable. After all, users won't break stuff if they are not actually using the infrastructure.
When I started, I was backfilling someone who created the Excel model and was responsible for batch exporting data from SAP, crunching the numbers in Excel, and sending that out to the sites every morning. My onboarding consisted of being given his laptop and his login credentials[1], and being met with a desktop full of dozens nested folders of Excel sheets in that exact version control format. I still have nightmares of that week.
[1] My manager had successfully kept IT from being able to get the laptop for re-imaging. But my senior VP located on a different continent had to get involved to get IT to reset the guy's password for us.
unzip *.xlsm
git add .
Also, I wasn't allowed to install version control of any sort, so that's really the bigger problem.
I have no problems about it...less work for me, and they can do their work easily.