State Agency to Destroy Unauthorized USB Drives

Lucas123 writes "The State of Washington's Division of Child support has forced hundreds of workers to turn in personal USB flash drives and has instead begun issuing corporate-style USB drives. The goal is to centrally monitor, configure and prevent unauthorized access to storage devices. So far about 150 common drives have been issued. The agency eventually plans to destroy all existing thumb drives collected as part of the security policy change."

Comments

Misleading summary

[jlowery]

The article states that the previous drives were "independently purchased" by employees, which likely means they got permission to buy a drive, went to Staples to get it, and then were reimbursed by the state. That would mean that they are not "personal" USB drives.

I know... I apologize for reading the article.

Somebody has woken up to to personal privacy

[AlecC]

Given the casual way in which UK goverement employees, both civil and military, have been treating confidential information, I am glad that a department with seriously confidential information is taking the security of portable storage media seriously. Obviously, if the media were personally ppurchased and used in good faith, the owners of the media must be compensated. But, as previously suggested, these were probably privately purchased and then refunded as expenses, to the belong to the emplyer already.

As to destroying them... Put this in proportion: 150 devices, at perhaps $30 apiece if they wern't bought yesterday: about $4500. On the otyher side, when the UK government lost 2 CDs with large amounts of personal information, the mailshot warning the people whose personal and banking information had been misplaced cost $6,000,000. With cost ratios of this magnitude, the precautionary principle applies. Yes, you could wipe them, and they probably wouldn't leak info. But the cost if they did is so high that the tiny loss involved in destruction is irrelevant.

So I applaud a government department for finally taking privacy seriously. The cost arises becasue they didn't do so before, and is small. The cost for all the other departments who have not yet got it is increasing every day.