Note: This was written a few months back. Unfortunately I forgot about it, and never published it until today.

How many times have you seen a misplaced USB flash drive, or any other removable media (CD-ROM, floppy) and just plugged it into your PC to see what’s on it or to find its owner?

An article over at Darkreading highlights the dangers of rogue thumb drives, and the potential effects are pretty enormous. I wonder how many corporate secrets like product development plans have been silently stolen using methods like this?

Of course, now this brings into question whether or not to allow USB devices to be used in companies. Restricting employee freedoms and tying them down more and more could affect morale (I know it would me…not being trusted enough). I wonder if you could restrict Windows to only allow authorised USB MSDs…