Progress in new technology, driven by the autumn in Nand Flash worth, has led to a number of small devices that can hold a significant amount of data. The device that epitomises all of these is the USB Flash Drive. In 1999 a 16MB USB Flash Drive price £50 now a 4GB USB Flash Drive prices only £10.
USB Flash Drives have been an incredible good friend to companies over the last few years, making it quick and simple to switch data from one machine to another and to carry work house to complete without needing to haul round a heavy laptop. Nonetheless, with flash drives being able to hold ever growing amounts of data and switch data faster than ever, USB flash drives are being looked at by some firms as one in every of their biggest threats to security.
The use of USB Flash Drives in business poses three classes of risk: the contraction of a pc virus; the loss of data and the theft of data. All three of those are considerably severe: a computer virus may totally wipe out an organization’s IT infrastructure and delete their most vital files, if the corporate hasn’t an effective data backup this may wreck it; if an organization holds sensitive data and loses it, the company could possibly be found to have broken the DPA and will get fined a crippling sum of money, to not mention the damage to its popularity; if a sales person walks out with your total clients database and offers it to his new firm you are going to lose at least a few customers.
Fortuitously there are some solutions out there to reduce the possibilities of businesses being a sufferer of one of many sad situations mentioned above.
1. Removal of USB ports — The removal of USB ports is a slightly extreme response to this potential risk and is usually a practically tough one to implement, a variety of companies use USB ports for their mice and keyboards and these would all must be changed.
2. Encryption of USB Drives — Encryption on USB Flash Drive can take one among varieties either a hardware encryption or software encryption. Types of hard ware inscription might embrace only allowing access to the USB Flash Drive after the consumer has authenticated his or her authority using a password, encryption certificate or biometric authentication (most commonly finger print recognition but generally also retina recognition). The encryption of storage media can be managed through software examples are Microsoft’s Active Directory and Novell’s eDirectory, each will be set up to use certificates to data held on USB Flash Drives.
3. Prohibit access to essential files on critical servers — As with all firm information access ought to be given on a have to foundation and taken away from workers as quickly as they now not need that access: if you’re going to give somebody their notice is it price letting them have access while they sit it out?
4. Monitor access of firm workers to sensitive files — Just because your staff have access to the data does not imply they have ant rights to do with as they please. Monitoring their behaviour with sensitive data is one of the best way to identify any unusual sample and can give you time to behave and stop any doable data leaks.
5. Limit size of data switchred to USB drives- Data switch restriction software can be used to protect sensitive files by capping the sizes of files that can be copied to a USB Flash Drive. The file measurement limit merely needs to be set to the size of the smallest sensitive files.
6. Implement USB Flash Drive insurance policies — Implementing USB Flash Drive Insurance policies can go a long way to reducing the risk of accidental loss of data, policies alone aren’t likely to cease a disgruntled worker from doing any damage. Listed here are some policies you might need to consider: USB Flash Drives ought to only be used for data switch and not storage. Data should not be on USB Flash Drives for over a week. Data should not be switchred to USB flash drives without prior consent type a manager.
7. Firepartitions and Anti viruses — Viruses might be contracted from USB Flash Drives just as they are often contracted from another type of media. To keep your self safe make positive you have got the latest updates installed for whichever antivirus software you use.
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