Those Pesky Evil iPods Again

Overhype

from the ban-everything dept

Remember the Gartner report that claimed iPods were a risk to the workplace because (oh no!) someone might connect it to their computer and steal corporate secrets? The same one that was rumored (but later denied) to have convinced the UK military to ban iPods? Well, it looks like security folks are trying to drum up more business on that front, talking about just how big a security threat USB and Firewire ports are. Admittedly, there is some risk, and the fact that most security pros are focused on external problems coming into at the router level, rather than problems introduced at the computer level is an issue. However, most computers nowadays have client-side anti-virus programs which would catch such malicious files coming over a USB connection. The other fear, that people will use it going outbound (downloading corporate secrets to the iPod), is a problem that is never going to go away. There’s always going to be some way to get information off of a computer, whether by floppy disk, by email attachment, by FTP, by camera phone, by printing, by writing it down or even by iPod. That’s the nature of information, and making a big stink about how dangerous this particular interface is seems to be building this up into a bigger problem than it really should be.