Basic Windows Security Question

From: Andrew McIntosh (amcintosh_at_networkadvocates.com)
Date: 03/29/05

  • Next message: Sherman Hand: "Scanning--more then one side to the argument" 
    Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 16:20:46 -0500
To: <security-basics@securityfocus.com>

    Hello Everybody,

    I am curious to see the different suggestions for this scenario:

    Suppose you have a small company of less than 100 employees. One of the
    employees likes to bring his work home on occasion. He does so using a
    USB thumb drive. One day he catches a [virus, worm, Trojan, spyware,
    anything you can think of] at home and it winds up on his thumb drive,
    which he in turn brings to the company network.

    The company certainly should have anti-virus software in place, which
    would fix that problem. But what if he unknowingly loads a key logging
    program that could capture private customer information? What do you
    suggest? Here is what I could think of so far:

    Disable USB Port - That would solve the particular problem and create
    other problems. For instance, substitute the thumb drive with a floppy
    disk or CD. For obvious reasons you don't want to disable those as well.

    Restrict user permissions - That could potentially prevent a program
    from installing itself, but it would also cause the user some grief if
    they need to install programs themselves, or even do simple things like
    changing personal settings.

    Security Policy - Haven't looked into this yet, but maybe there is a way
    to prevent the use of thumb drives and other specific devices through
    security policy.

    What do you think?

    Thanks!

    ====================
    amcintosh@ntad.com
    ====================

  • Next message: Sherman Hand: "Scanning--more then one side to the argument"

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