Slightly Off KIlter

Apparently the Gartner research firm has recently noticed that an iPod is actually a fully functional hard drive…. and they’re spreading paranoia.

News Story by Laura Rohde

JULY 06, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) – The iPod may be popular, but it also poses such a major security risk for businesses that enterprises should seriously consider banning it and other portable storage devices, according to a study by research firm Gartner Inc.

The devices, using a Universal Serial Bus (USB) or FireWire (IEEE 1394), are risky because they could be used to introduce malicious code into a corporate network or steal corporate data, the Stamford, Conn.-based research company said in its report, “How to Tackle the Threat From Portable Storage Devices.”

The report, published Friday, pointed to a variety of devices, including pocket-size portable FireWire hard drives like those from LaCie Group SA or Toshiba Corp., or USB hard drives or key-chain drives such as the DiskOnKey from M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers Ltd. Gartner also named disk-based MP3 players, like Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod, as a security risk, as well as digital cameras with smart media cards, memory sticks and compact flash.

Was Gartner asleep when the USB keychain drives were first introduced? It’s been several years now. Before that, there were external SCSI drives, magneto-optical drives, Zip drives… I bought my first Zip drive in 1994/5. Machines shipped with internal Zip drives. I think Gartner is over-reacting to a nonexistent threat.

I admit that I purchased my iPod because it’s a 10 GB firewire hard drive. I keep my personal licensed apps on my iPod drive. And yes, I also copy data from work … I take it home. I work on it there and bring it back the next day. Most companies seem to like to think their employees are willing to take work home.

If companies really want to worry about data leaving the office, they should look no further than the nearest laptop. People carry data home every day on laptops; they work with that data at home, on the bus, on the train… I worked for 6 months for a large financial firm that decided to assign employees laptop computers instead of desktop computers in order to make it easier for them to take work home.

I wonder why Gartner doesn’t seem to have noticed the laptops traveling to and from Corporate networks on a daily basis?

Gartner advised companies to forbid employees and external contractors who have direct access to corporate networks from using these privately owned devices with corporate PCs. Companies should also consider a “desktop lockdown policy,” disabling universal plug-and-play functions after installing desired drivers, to permit the use of only authorized devices.

The report conceded that the devices themselves can be quite useful within corporations, making it “unpractical and counterproductive” to introduce an outright ban.

Uh huh. Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. The Evil Triad.

I have to wonder… does anyone (even Gartner Inc) really think that a few iPods pose a serious threat to corporate networks already running several hundred (or thousand) copies of MS Outlook? Can you say “Melissa“?