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Electronic Christmas Gifts: Risk Factor for Companies
This year, MP3 players, USB sticks and other trendy mobile devices will once again cause joy and surprise under the Christmas tree. However, most people don't simply use the portable music players or minicomputer at home: they also bring them in to work.
For this reason Utimaco, supplier of data security solutions, advises all IT administrators to increase their measures to ensure compliance with corporate IT security guidelines. Especially after Christmas, the use of privately-owned devices in the company should be restricted or completely forbidden within the company.
Given the proliferation of personal storage devices, there are many IT security stumbling blocks that can affect a workplace. In the last business quarter for example, 6.5 million Apples iPods were sold. Given a average storage capacity of three gigabytes for every iPod sold, this means a total storage capacity of approximately 19.5 million gigabytes--a massive amount of capacity.
The risk for malware to sneak onto the corporate network via mobile data media such as MP3 players or USB sticks continues to grow and grow. All it takes is for staff to unknowingly download infected files from the mobile external devices onto their work PC, and then run them. Fixing the damage is expensive and can, in the worst case, cause data loss with serious consequences for continued business.
Tiny mobile devices such as Apple iPods and other MP3 players also make it very easy to copy data from the corporate network. Nowadays, mobile hard disks allow gigabytes of data to be downloaded in minutes. This data export can also become a threat to a company's ability to operate--either through potential damage to its image, its business confidence, or its ability to compete--if customer data or internal analytical data is made public.
In order to "kill several birds with one stone," IT administrators should therefore use an access rights management system to control the ports on the desktop PCs and notebooks in the company, or even block them, for external devices. For everyone who wants to benefit from mobile devices and does not want to simply give up running their business, Utimaco has put together a list of five administrator tips which can be found at http://www.utimaco.com/toptips.
"It's a fact that many staff, as well as IT administrators, are not aware of the security risks caused by the use of private mobile devices such as portable music players, memory media, PDAs and smartphones," said Craig Bumpus, General Manager, North American Operations for Utimaco. "For this reason, companies should tell employees about such dangers and train them in how to use mobile devices securely. The risk for all concerned can be reduced considerably by implementing a few simple security guidelines in the company, and making it imperative that employees comply with those rules." 20.12.2005, Utimaco Safeware AG
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