When Data Goes Missing Will You Even Know?

Lam1969 writes "Jack Gold says IT shops may have a huge problem on their hands, and probably don't know even know about it. The problem is USB flash drives, which he predicts will probably reach 10 GB in capacity in three years, and the lack of policies to guide use of them by employees. From the article: 'With more and more employees using flash drives, smart phones with Secure Digital memory cards, portable hard drives, etc., the likelihood of companies actually knowing about all instances of data loss is declining rapidly. And as a result, the possibility of companies breaking laws, whether for data-loss disclosure or regulatory compliance, is growing dramatically.' Gold predicts 'at least one publicized major case of unencrypted data loss from a portable device' in the next year, which will result in many companies banning these kinds of devices."

Comments

Re:A little epoxy will fix that right up.

[serialdogma]

You can disable drivers in windows also, you know. It only requires you to be an administrator and know how to use regedit.

Re:We already hear about it

[johnw]

The idea of removing a _copy_ of the data is not loss, it is theft.

Taking a copy of someone's data (even without their permission) is not theft. Theft has a very precise definition and the fact that you've only taken a copy means it can't be theft. You'd have to take the owner's only copy (or copy the data and then erase the original) for it to be theft.

This incidentally is why F.A.C.T. and F.A.S.T. are both very badly named.