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

Post by wolfgke » Wed, May 16, 2018, 8:50 PM UTC

petra wrote: post #64

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…

How can they prevent migration of talented people, given China's infinite war chest ?

Post by jacquesm » Wed, May 16, 2018, 8:56 PM UTC

Post by jacquesm » Wed, May 16, 2018, 8:59 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #40

dogma1138 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An implementation I’ve seen had all ports locked down on the laptop itself and physically locked with a plastic plug that can’t be removed without leaving evidence. The keyboard and mouse were connected to a dock. On the OS level only HID devices were allowed via USB you could bypass this if you had admin rights but it would leave a trail. The idea behind these like most other security controls is to prevent accident…

> you could bypass this if you had admin rights but it would leave a trail A move I've seen being put in place at several locations, is removing local admin rights from all users. Those with advanced needs, like developers, gets a VM which is limited to a specific VLAN, with no access to the production environments. The principle is sound, implementation is ... difficult, to say the least.

Post by slededit » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:02 PM UTC

cf498 wrote: post #94

slededit wrote: post #3

I remember they came to our school to show off their new hot desk software they wrote. Look how efficiently we can use space! I saw it as saying your so unimportant we won't even give you a dedicated desk. Now apparently you can't even use common tools to get the job done. If I had a big meeting I wouldn't take a chance on the network to keep my presentation.

>Now apparently you can't even use common tools to get the job done. If I had a big meeting I wouldn't take a chance on the network to keep my presentation. Then you are an active threat to your networks security. You sound like you have an incentive and willingness to put in effort and take personal risks to circumvent the security protocol at your workplace. Looking at employees without bad intents, this is as bad…

Post by mc32 » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:05 PM UTC

salgernon wrote: post #96

Lev1a wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And hospitals (not the glueing part, but the blocking of anything that's recognized as a USB storage medium).

I met with a medical specialist at a huge hospital in New York - I had a usb drive with about 50G imaging data (pet, ct, mri) and they refused to access it. Fortunately I was also hosting it on my own server in various formats - nope, they can’t access the external network. I ended up burning the whole set to a spindle of dvds, which they could then import .. and shred.