Employee wants to use his own network hub/switch

An employee comes to you and asks if he can bring his own hub/switch so he can have one more ethernet socket for another computer. As a CISO, would you allow that? 

As a CISO, your answer should be no — and this is not about distrust of the employee, but about network integrity and risk management. You can trust the employee, but malware knows no trust.

“Allowing personal switches turns one controlled access point into multiple uncontrolled ones. It undermines network security, monitoring, and compliance. The correct solution is to provide additional ports through IT.”

The verdict

• Allow personal switch? no
• Reason: it bypasses security controls, reduces visibility, and increases operational risk (hub is like a wiretap, switch allows multiple devices behind one controlled port)
• Solution: IT supplies and manages the required connectivity