Secure USB Drive

The City Council of Manchester, England, has counted the cost of an outbreak of Conficker in its network earlier this year,  and it comes to a staggering £1.5M ($2.5M) according to a report in The Register. 

The Council was also prevented from issuing hundreds of motoring penalty notices after Conficker worm knocked out parts of its IT systems.  Drivers escaped punishment after the Council’s fine processing system was taken offline in February this year, causing 1,609 motoring offences to go unpunished. 

Infection by the worm left Council staff unable to send emails or print documents, and struggling with extra paperwork after they were obliged to keep additional back-up records in case data was lost.

Clean up costs and consultancy fees were estimated at £600K. In additional, council IT chiefs spent a further £600k on thin client terminals.  A further £169,000 was spent on extra staff needed to handle a backlog of benefits claims.

And the cause of the infection?  Council chiefs blame an infected USB memory stick, and have disabled all computer USB ports in response to the incident.  How much would have been saved by rolling out secure USB flash drives with on-board, integrated anti-virus to stop the infection spreading?