Flash Drives in the Government

This post is based off of this news story: NextGov.com

Flash drives have become a big problem within the government.  I have spoke on this before, and cover it heavily in this weeks episode of The Way It Should Be - Episode 6.  I am going to turn that rant into written form.

Flash media of any kind should be banned in highly sensitive facilities...like the government.  Flash drives are smaller versions of hard drives that can contract a virus and obtain damage from outside sources.  Flash drives can just as easily get infected with a virus or malware and then when you plug it into multiple computers, that virus is being spread.  Some may argue the Auto Run feature on Windows 7, but there are still ways around it.  You still open individual files on the flash drive and you still copy and paste files from computer to drive.  There are ways around everything to get infected.

That being said, I thought that it was a great idea for the Pentagon to begin bans on flash media...but now the military want's to reinstate them.  Why?  There are numerous threats with allowing this again.  Not to mention the fact that you can lose the flash drive.  They are getting smaller and smaller and people are losing them more often.  What's to say that unencrypted data is going to get stolen or fall into the wrong hands if the drive is lost?  Too many variables to account for.

The fix...the government needs to design their own flash media that is encrypted multiple times and has some kind of tracking device inside that allows it to be tracked if lost.  This might not be needed in every device, but sensitive information ones should contain some kind of GPS tracking technology.  We know it already exists.  Just look at GPS units or the future of microchip implants in newborns.  (Not in love with that idea).

Right now, the government needs to continue to block flash drives in the workplace.  To me, this is just another way to ensure data security and make sure things do not get into the wrong hands.

Your thoughts?

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