Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IBM bans USB, SD cards, flash drives and portable devices from every office

theregister.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 202 posts

Re: IBM bans USB, SD cards, flash drives and portable devices from every office

#71

Post by [deleted] »

visarga wrote: post #66
genericone wrote: post #17

This is common at many semiconductor companies. Not only is it a ban at one specific semiconductor oem I know of, the usb-ports are disabled and the usb-ports on new issue computers are epoxied to prevent trying to use them. Semiconductor technology is one of the areas of global-technological competition which surely benefit from secrecy. For example, several years ago one of the c-level executives at this specific O…

> the usb ports are disabled and the usb ports on new issue computers are epoxied to prevent trying to use them. That means many current day laptops can't be charged.

[deleted]

Re: IBM bans USB, SD cards, flash drives and portable devices from every office

#72

Post by collinf »

cepth wrote: post #13

This is already standard practice for several industries. For example, you’d be hard pressed to find a pharma company nowadays that allows the use of any removable media. The likely “replacement” is that IBM employees will have to use some sort of corporate VPN to work remotely.

What sort of Fortune x00 company doesn't use a corporate VPN?

Re: IBM bans USB, SD cards, flash drives and portable devices from every office

#73

Post by emilfihlman »

Banning removable media is 100% the right direction (of course there needs to be exceptions for DSLRs and install media and whatnot, duh)

The amount of idiocy I've seen with storing sensitive and work intensive documents in USB sticks is horrible.

Re: IBM bans USB, SD cards, flash drives and portable devices from every office

#74

Post by ascagnel_ »

forgotmysn wrote: post #50
kevinSuttle wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already do.

I thought IBM was ending their remote work options?

Remote work and working remotely are two very different things. The former usually refers to making your own arrangements for normal working hours outside of commuting to a corporate office; the latter usually refers to off-hours or one-off arrangements.

IBM may not want people remote working, but they'll be happy to have people working remotely at nights, on weekends, etc.

Re: IBM bans USB, SD cards, flash drives and portable devices from every office

#76

Post by sailfast »

Rafuino wrote: post #75

Interesting but seems kind of late, no? Even the US State Department has banned USB drives since at least 2008. I don't think US government is particularly well known for being good at security.

Agreed - this doesn't seem like that big a step at all from a security perspective. The main change is that it will now force a bunch of folks to think about how they manage their data and their consulting teams especially will get annoyed with how "hard" it is to transfer that powerpoint deck for their presentation.

Leaving data lying around on a stick is one vector. Malware and other considerations is quite another that should be discussed more often. Especially if your posture is jelly-filled.

I'm guessing they got burned here at least once with a relatively large dataset that somebody left in a cafe somewhere.

Re: IBM bans USB, SD cards, flash drives and portable devices from every office

#77

Post by kevinSuttle »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #74
forgotmysn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought IBM was ending their remote work options?

Remote work and working remotely are two very different things. The former usually refers to making your own arrangements for normal working hours outside of commuting to a corporate office; the latter usually refers to off-hours or one-off arrangements. IBM may not want people remote working, but they'll be happy to have people working remotely at nights, on weekends, etc.

Right. Even when you're on a campus and not on the employee SSID, you need to VPN in.

Re: IBM bans USB, SD cards, flash drives and portable devices from every office

#78

Post by kevinSuttle »

chiph wrote: post #55
kevinSuttle wrote: post #48

Just another act of IBM's security theatre, and a testament to their backwards views on employee experience.

You're not wrong on their poor employee experience, but there's very little theater involved - there's good reason to protect their IP. Any firm that invests multi-millions in original design will want to protect their property from theft. Semiconductors were mentioned, but also think about someone like Pixar.

The thing is, what's stopping employees from uploading files to a server? The physical devices are a fraction of a fraction of IP theft. Hence the term "theatre".

Re: IBM bans USB, SD cards, flash drives and portable devices from every office

#79

Post by myelin »

mc32 wrote: post #19

Don’t FB and Goog already do this in practice if not completely enforced (i.e. epoxying the connectors). What’s the news about this?

Google's a bit more trusting of its employees. There's an expectation that you won't use non-Google services to store or transmit anything work-related, however. No code on laptops, no documents kept outside of G Suite, etc.
Post reply on HN