Thejo Kote

A post on The Tech Beat, a BusinessWeek blog mentions how something known as Pod Slurping can be a major security threat to enterprises in the coming days. Pod Slurping (how imaginative a name) is nothing but using devices like memory sticks, cellphones and jukeboxes like the iPod to copy files from the PC at work. While the name is yet another irritating piggy back on the successful iPod, it’s really simple to put a company in an awkward position using such devices. I’ve used my jukebox to record sessions anchored by an architect who had come down from Ottawa, and then shared it with everyone else on the team. But it is extremely easy to just copy anything that is available on the network. And, a lot can be copied onto the 20 GB hard disk.

In my company, as might be the case everywhere else, all the licensed software can be found in one place on the fileservers, with all the registration keys too. To make matters worse, companies like Microsoft provide a corporate key, so that every PC need not be activated. If the licensed software makes its way out, it can easily be traced back to the source, and that will definitely be embarrassing. It’s not just software – someone could walk away with any data like code or documents. Though I’m sure people are generally not stupid enough to do that, a disgruntled employee can never be ruled out.

There is already a pretty severe rule which prevents any magnetic media from entering/leaving the campus, but I can’t see much that can be done to implement it. The better approach would be to prevent the use of such devices at the OS level, which I believe is being incorporated in Windows Vista. Also, blocking it at the OS level would be the better approach because of the gaining usage of laptops. But such blocks would definitely be a pain in the neck for legitimate uses. I say pain in the neck because there will be some way to overcome that too. As these devices become more and more popular, enterprises will definitely need to do more to secure their data.