Can a thumb drive hurt your business

Think about this for a minute...

Someone can walk up to any computer in your office, insert a thumb drive (memory stick, flash drive, etc...), reboot that computer and potentially access everything on your system.

Now, this is a major over simplification of the problem. But nonetheless, it is possible. Mandriva, several months ago, brought forth just such a device that can be inserted into any computer that has been setup to allow a boot to take place from a portable USB device. Once their operating system has booted up on that computer, any device attached to the computer is susceptible to access. Is there secure information on its hard drive? Is it a laptop that holds confidential client information? Or, could it even hold the names of covert operatives working for the CIA?

If sensitive information resides on the hard drives of computers within your organization you must take steps to secure it. A very basic way to prevent this particular danger is to password protect access to the BIOS on your computers and then disable the ability of your computers to boot from portable devices.

These simple steps will keep unintentional access to your systems from occurring and hopefully make it easier to secure sensitive information.