Slashdot Mirror
iPod: Your Portable Corporate Hellraiser
MrAndrews writes "In an article on ZDNet UK, a Gartner says that "Companies should consider banning portable storage devices such as Apple's
iPod from corporate networks as they can be used to introduce malware or
steal corporate data" I recently came into contact with a similar policy at a consulting firm that was concerned that top-secret information might escape through my USB watch, and made me leave it at the front desk every day. In that case, I know it was absurd overkill ... but is this concern a legitimate concern? No more music on the way into the office?"
...or are you just glad to see me?
Seriously, the barn door's been open and the horse halfway to Topeka on this one for a while. Who needs an iPod? I've been carrying around virtually my entire business on one of these things for over a year. Sure, take away my music player, phone, key chain, watch, whatever, I'm a big boy and you pay me enough to play along, but at what point short of a strip search and replacing the pink-haired receptionist with a Brinks guard to watch over the stash does this policy become a smidge unwieldy?
(However, I do throw my whole-hearted support behind any policy which confiscates iPods (or sunglasses, for that matter) from any too-cool-for-the-room tool who doesn't stow them shortly after he enters the building...)
You know, I could bypass such security precautions very easily with a USB keyfob and tightly squeezed buttocks....
At one point the corporate machine-support staff tried to set up the following:
The sneaky bastards kept trying to steal my laptop, my PDA and my Nomad Jukebox to do this. I kept catching them and throwing them out of my cube (at one point, literally, as he refused to leave until he had formatted my laptop's hard drive and I had to roll him out in my chair and overturn it in the corridor).
Finally, they stopped that after they did this to an senior VP and erased the powerpoint presentation he had on his laptop. Heads rolled for THAT little debacle. The funny part was that his machine was already work-provided, he just didn't work in our building, so they didn't know him...
Brazil has decided you're cute.
You know, if your employees actually CARE about hooking up their iPods or other MP3 players at work, you should be more concerned about what your employees are actually DOING, as opposed to what data could be stolen. My iPod's Library is managed by my home machine, not my work machine, and the only reason I bring it inside is to keep it out of my hot car during the day. I don't even bring a cable that would be compatible.
I'll just burn the site licensed software to CD and take it home that way...
Guns don't kill people. iPods kill people.
Sincerely,
Tom Ridge
Homeland Security Chief and Microsoft beneficiary
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
A friend of a friend mentioned that when the iPod first came out he saw a student "jammin'" to some tunes while checking out the new Macintosh computers at the University Bookstore.
A closer look revealed that the student had the firewire cable attached to the demo mac and was busily downloading all of the applications on the mac.
Pretty clever though I would never condone such behavior.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
That's why I got the subdermal implant with 16mb flash and bluetooth. Just copy data to my stomach and walk out, search all you want.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
written by Quentin Tarantino & Roger Avary
Captain Koons: Hello, little man. Boy, I sure heard a bunch about you. See, I was a good friend of your dad's. We were in that .com pit of hell together over five years. Hopefully...you'll never have to experience this yourself, but when two men are in a situation like me and your Dad were, for as long as we were, you take on certain responsibilities of the other. If it had been me who had not made it, Major Coolidge would be talkin' right now to my son Jim. But the way it turned out is I'm talkin' to you, Butch. I got somethin' for you. .com boom. It was bought in a little general store in Knoxville, Tennessee. Made by the first company to ever make USB drives. Up till then people just carried loads of floppies. It was bought by private Doughboy Erine Coolidge on the day he set sail for Paris. It was your great-grandfather's job drive and he wore it everyday he was in that job. When he had done his duty, he went home to your great-grandmother, took the pendrive off, put it an old coffee can, and in that can it stayed 'til your granddad Dane Coolidge was called upon by his country to go overseas and fight Microsoft once again. This time they called it Browser War II. Your great-grandfather gave this pendrive to your granddad for good luck. Unfortunately, Dane's luck wasn't as good as his old man's. Dane was a Java programmer and he was fired -- along with the other programmers at the battle of .NET. Your granddad was facing death, he knew it. None of those boys had any illusions about ever leavin' that job alive. So three days before Microsoft took the market, your granddad asked an Unix sysadmin of Winocki, a man he had never met before in his life, to deliver to his infant son, who he'd never seen in the flesh, his USB pendrive. Three days later, your granddad was dead. But Winocki kept his word. After the war was over, he paid a visit to your grandmother, delivering to your infant father, his Dad's pendrive. This pendrive. (holds it up, long pause) This drive was on your Daddy's pocket when he was caught near Redmond. He was captured, put in a Microsoft campus. He knew if the gooks ever saw the pendrive it'd be confiscated, taken away. The way your Dad looked at it, that pendrive was your birthright. He'd be damned if any slopes were gonna put their greasy yella hands on his boy's birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something. His ass. Five long years, he wore this pendrive up his ass. Then he died of dysentery, he gave me the drive. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of silicon up my ass two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the pendrive to you.
(The Captain sits down and pulls a USB flash drive from his pocket)
This pendrive I got here was first purchased by your great-grandfather during the first
Signatures are for stupids.
"What's to stop you simply encrypting the data, then wrapping it up or tagging it on the end of valid MP3 songs?"
Honesty. Dislike of prison. Attachment to receiving a paycheck. Fear of John Ashcroft.
Any number of things.
Seems to me the first step should be to disable USB on machines which do not need it in the BIOS then lock the BIOS....
Sounds like a good idea. This should keep those crum-bums from stealing data from my workstation with their USB dri- hey, why did my mouse stop working???
Me: Gun Nerd.
Gee, with a name like grassy knoll I would never have guessed...
MORTAR COMBAT!