4 reasons enterprises should double check their USB security

Storage devices have come a long way, starting from the flat and huge floppy disks to a tiny pocket friendly USB drive. The development and application of external storage devices has become very wide like USB drives, DVD’s, Harddisks or at times on-cloud. Though all these data storage equipment do own a lot of perks, they also come with substantial amounts of vulnerabilities that need to be fixed and take care. 

Universal Serial Bus (USB) was first introduced in 1994 for rapid transfer of data, and then evolution of USB drives began gradually, resulting in the 3.0 versions. In this article, we will discuss about the four prime reasons for enterprises to double check their USB security and keep their network safe against potential threats. 

Booby-trapped USB drives can wreck havoc 

Hackers can take control of your keyboard and mouse in minutes if the booby-trapped USB drives get in contact with a your corporate network or a computer. Booby-trapped USB drives can wreck chaos to enterprises if not properly diagnosed and restricted.

Historic Stuxnet incident that took down Iranian nuclear facilities, is one great example to understand the power of infected USB drives.

Disgruntled employees can elude with your corporate data

USB drives have always been a blind spot when compared to emails, files and user accounts that system administrators manage using GPO. Thanks to its rapid data transfer abilities, a single drive could become hazardous for businesses if not properly identified or restricted to interact with your corporate ecosystem.

Especially a disgruntled employee could elude with your business critical information if the USB drives are not properly secured and monitored.

Escalated privileges for USB usage  

Free usage of USB drives, without any user based or department based access could result in extensive access to corporate ecosystems and sensitive documents. Escalted privileges for users has to be removed and only limited privileges are to be granted for the targeted departments and users. 

Data can flow either way through a USB drive 

Not only data theft or deploying malicious EXE’s, USB drives can also be used for uploading unwanted information into your corporate databases. Hackers are always known for wrecking havoc, or encrypting data for ransom but what if their motive is to upload anonymous and unwanted personal data into business database, considering the data laws like GDPR and CCPA are becoming much of a reality, an unrecognized and unwanted personal data into a business database can penalize the enterprise financially and cause decent amount of damage their brand reputation. 

Enterprises these days have a lot of things to worry about, IaaS, SaaS, Data Centres, Endpoints, Audits, Patches and more, considering all that USB security management should not be underestimated. A few minutes of compromised USB drives interacting with the corporate network can result in heavy damages to enterprises. 

System administrators need to define the right USB security management policies to identify known devices, restrict unknown devices and identify the data that is being transferred through using the USB drives, administrators can use active GPO policies, data leakage management or endpoint management tools for effective USB security and device management capabilities.