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iPod: Your Portable Corporate Hellraiser

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the without-the-aid-of-britney dept.

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?"

2 of 679 comments (clear)

  1. Second step? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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....

  2. German c't magazine showed how to disable USB... by flowerp · · Score: 5, Informative

    The German c't magazine recently had a short article about disabling the USB storage driver for non-administrator users on Windows 2000 and XP - effectively eliminating the security risk. This policy could be enforced by any system administrator on all desktops. Similar things could be done for Firewire ports and storage devices that attach to it. Basically it works by making the driver non-readable and non-executable for the average Joe Schmoe user logging into the system.

    Bring your own USB sticks? No problem. Can't use em anymore ;)

    Christian

    --
    --- Eat my sig.