You know those diddly little memory drives (variously called thumbdrives, USB drives, Flash drives or memory sticks) that plug into the USB port of a computer? Ever thought about how dangerous they might be? Each one can hold massive amounts of information - even the tiniest holds 256MB - but four times that is commonplace. By the end of 2008 one manufacturer, SanDisk, reckons it will be up to 128GB.

Go to a conference or an exhibition and it’s highly likely you get a thumbdrive packed with information from various exhibiting companies. It’s cheaper than printing stuff and it has a residual use which is of value to the recipient. Looking around my desk, I can see half a dozen - five promotional ones plus a real one that I actually bought. I’m sure more are tucked away in pockets and bags. And all contain masses of information. The ones I fear losing most are those that contain ‘my life’ when I’m about to go on a trip and make a quick backup of all the key stuff in case the laptop goes ‘phut’ and I have to borrow someone else’s.

Do you know whether people in your organisation bring thumbdrives into and out of work? Do you know whether they habitually copy stuff to work on outside? Or bring stuff in from outside to work on in the office? Either way, you are exposed to risks. Inbound devices containing malicious code which could threaten your system. Outbound devices exposing you to the risks associated with information theft or loss.

SanDisk commissioned a survey among corporate end users and IT staff. 25 percent of users were likely to copy customer records to a thumb drive. 17 percent would copy financial information. 15 percent business plans. 13 percent employee records. It goes on, but you get the general idea.

Unlike a CD which is difficult to conceal, the thumbdrives can lurk anywhere. Physical searches would have to be very intimate to ensure that none of these devices are passing your threshold in either direction.

Measures to deal with the risk vary from user education to central control of the ports on user machines. Somewhere in the middle is the filling of every spare USB port with epoxy resin and supergluing the connectors in the remainder

The best way to get the latest infortmation is to run a Google search for USB drive security 2008.