There is no doubt, storage devices are getting smaller. Whilst this is a major breakthrough in technology it does pose many threats to your company and its computer network.

Data Theft
Huge amounts of data can be stored on a device smaller than a match box. These could be confidential client information, patient files, internal document or even client/customer databases.

Malware & Viruses
These devices can easily contract a virus carrying it into your office and finding a backdoor into your corporate network.

It is not necessarily a malicious act that causes these problems, consider the scenario; someone copies a company financial spreadsheet to a storage device to take home and finish for a meeting the next day. On the way home he looses the device or it gets stolen. Alternatively someone plugs their iPod into a company computer to charge its battery, whilst unwittingly copying a virus onto the network.

The recent explosion of small storage devices means that most people now carry these regularly into the office. Such devices include iPods, mp3 players, digital cameras, mobile phones and PDA’s. Many of these devices are capable of holding more than just music, photos and text messages. Also many computers now come as standard with Floppy Disk Drives, CD and DVD Writers, all of which can store data.

How do I stop this?
The first stop is clearly a company policy banning the use of any devices not issued by the company.

How do I enforce the policy
Finn Consultants can help you enforce the policy.

- We can provide a solution that restricts the use of these devices, either by specific staff or company wide
- We can allow specific file types to be copied to these drives, for example Word documents but not databases
- We can allow only specific devices such as an authorised PDA, but can restrict all other devices
- CD, DVD and floppy disk drives can also be restricted all together or made ‘read only’
- If required you can be emailed there is an attempt to use a banned device

We can advise and implement a solution that suits the way your business works and helps to ensure your data is safe, call us now.