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Those Pesky Evil iPods Again
from the ban-everything dept
Remember the Gartner report that claimed iPods were a risk to the workplace because (oh no!) someone might connect it to their computer and steal corporate secrets? The same one that was rumored (but later denied) to have convinced the UK military to ban iPods? Well, it looks like security folks are trying to drum up more business on that front, talking about just how big a security threat USB and Firewire ports are. Admittedly, there is some risk, and the fact that most security pros are focused on external problems coming into at the router level, rather than problems introduced at the computer level is an issue. However, most computers nowadays have client-side anti-virus programs which would catch such malicious files coming over a USB connection. The other fear, that people will use it going outbound (downloading corporate secrets to the iPod), is a problem that is never going to go away. There's always going to be some way to get information off of a computer, whether by floppy disk, by email attachment, by FTP, by camera phone, by printing, by writing it down or even by iPod. That's the nature of information, and making a big stink about how dangerous this particular interface is seems to be building this up into a bigger problem than it really should be.
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iPod Security Risk
A very large cable company (rhymes with Tom Fast) just added that very policy to their company employee handbook.
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They should ban floppies.
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Re: ban
And camera phones.
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They're freaking out about USB drives and ignoring the fact that every new PC we purchase comes with a CD burner unless it's for management in which case it has a DVD burner. And nearly all of them have a Zip drive too. Funny how nobody seems to worry about all the handhelds though.
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Re: ban
My work does... No Camera Phones, floppies, or recordable media at work. We're only running NT4, so the whole USB drive issue hasn't come up.
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Re: banning USB drives
i use my jumpdrive @ school to steal full versions of apps all the time...
...i hope they dont ban them.
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If all else fails, it's not that tricky to open a case and take an HDD home... Of course it would be wrong to do that. Not difficult at all, - but wrong... :)
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