Secure USB Drive

It seems from a recent report that healthcare businesses have become a specific target for hackers in recent months. International managed security services company SecureWorks says that attempted hacker attacks launched at its healthcare clients doubled in Q4 2009, increasing from an average of 6,500 per healthcare client, per day in the first nine months of 2009, to an average of 13,400 per client per day in Q4 2009.

It’s suggested that there are two main reasons for this: the large amounts of identifiable data on patients stored within healthcare organisations, and the sheer number of possible attack vectors, including web-based attacks and attacks from devices (such as infected, unauthorised USB flash drives).

In some territories, such as the UK and Canada, healthcare bodies are rolling out extensive data security measures (such as secure USB drives with onboard anti-virus scanning). This is a sensible and practical response to the increase in data security risks.

We blogged recently about increasing regulation, and strong penalties for companies that suffer breaches in data security. Industry experts and analysts agree that these new moves will help to drive wider uptake of secure USB flash drives. Read More »

We saw in 2008 and 2009 how worms came back to prominence, thanks to the wide spread of Conficker and its variants. A timely reminder that the threat is still high was given last week, when Google revealed a highly sophisticated series of cyberattacks originating from China that stole some of its intellectual property and affected about 30 other Silicon Valley companies.

This recent attack shows how malicious software has evolved into an advanced weapon that can specifically target companies – even companies as advanced as Google – with the aim of gaining a financial or competitive advantage.

Attackers will try any method available to seed the malware onto a company network, including infecting USB flash drives and distributing them at events, or “losing” them in car parks for unwitting employees to find. That’s why latest-generation secure flash drives, such as our own Cruzer Enterprise range, can also feature onboard anti-malware scanning to nullify this threat.

It’s been talked about for some time, but now the UK’s information watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office, will soon be able to penalize companies that are proven to have acted recklessly or maliciously with personal data.
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SanDisk has recently identified a potential vulnerability in the access control mechanism and has provided a product update to address the issue. SanDisk customers were pro-actively notified and have been given the support required for updating their Cruzer® Enterprise drives.

In the past few days several news sites have reported on this incident. Most coverage addressed the issue at hand and referred to the SanDisk web site for the resolution. Some reporters and bloggers even approached SanDisk for a response.

However, some of the coverage was simply wrong and has caused confusion in the market.
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