Feature
Issue No. 38 - December/January 07/08
How to keep digital defences tight
Recently, an American security consultant did an interesting experiment.
He ‘dropped’ several USB drives in his client firm’s parking lot to see what employees would do.
Time and again, the staff members picked up the little ‘flash drives’, took them into the place of business, and promptly plugged them into their work computers to see what was on them.
The consultant highlighted the potential for damaging two-way traffic - viruses and other ‘malware’ in, information crucial to the business out.
As business goes global in a big way, business success is being dictated by how efficient and how ‘smart’ your business is. Success depends on how you handle your next good idea and such intellectual property has to be secured.
Many organisations spend significant time, money and effort on securing their computer systems against virus attack, spam and malware from the internet, with firewalls and anti-virus software.
They control access using passwords and logon controls to prevent external intrusion to systems.
This should keep external threats out as long as the software is kept up to date against emerging threats.
But the threat of ‘data leaks’ from portable media is expanding as fast as hardware boffins can work.
It’s now fairly easy to pick up USB drives, iPods and MP3 Players that allow around 80GB of data storage. They’re intended for entertainment, to store music, and video clips, and they come with a convenient USB port connection that allows users to play favourite tracks quietly at the desktop without disturbing others.
But these devices can be used to ‘drag and drop’ data files too. Confidential data such as customer lists, price lists, credit card details, personal information, product designs and more can be copied to portable media in seconds.
Uncontrolled use of USB devices as storage media means files containin...
