Forget Camera Phones, Now iPods Are A Security Risk

from the run-for-the-hills! dept.
Well now that analysts have gotten people all worked up about the security horror of camera phones, they've now set their sites on another evil security villain: the iPod. That's right, your iPods is a corporate risk. Hell, it could be used to introduce a virus or even to (gasp! oh no!) steal company files. Just wait until these analysts types learn about those USB keychain drives that just about everyone has already... oh wait, the report warns about those too. They then suggest that companies ban just about every new technology, no matter how useful it might be, just because there's a small risk that it could be misused. At what point do analysts stop freaking out about every new (or even not-so-new) technology, and realize that (a) banning the technology will never work and (b) will often make a company less productive than its rivals who learn to embrace new technologies? Is there a risk in any kind of additional, portable storage medium? Sure thing, but there's just as big a risk in someone ftp-ing files to an outside server. What it really means is that an IT staff no longer has to just be afraid of threats over the network, but also need to realize that threats can come from portable storage devices. Expect a ton of new client-side security products to start protecting on that side of the fence in the near future