{"id":6945,"date":"2020-04-09T12:10:39","date_gmt":"2020-04-09T17:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/?p=6945"},"modified":"2020-04-09T12:11:14","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T17:11:14","slug":"blocking-usb-drives-for-work-from-home-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/blocking-usb-drives-for-work-from-home-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"Blocking USB Drives For Work From Home Employees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With so many people working from home, the perimeter of corporate data safety has suddenly grown very large, in many cases encompassing employee home computers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/products\/file-sight\/product-information\/information-leak-protection\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Data loss prevention (DLP)<\/a> was challenging enough already, but now it takes on even more importance.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/employee-working-from-home.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6948\" src=\"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/employee-working-from-home.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/employee-working-from-home.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/employee-working-from-home-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One way that data can escape the corporate network is by getting copied to USB thumb drives.\u00a0 Some companies take the approach of gluing or epoxying the USB ports closed.\u00a0 Although effective, this prevents any future legitimate use of those ports (such as a camera for video conferencing).<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>PA File Sight has a better solution: the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/help\/latestfshelp.aspx?page=monitor_filesight-file-tracker.aspx&amp;ref=blog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">File Sight Endpoint<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0The Endpoint is a small agent that gets installed on client computers.\u00a0 \u00a0It\u2019s main purpose is to work with the server-side installation of PA File Sight to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/products\/file-sight\/product-information\/information-leak-protection\/?ref=blog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">detect and report on file copying activities<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0However, another powerful use is to block USB drives.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>With the Endpoint running, every time an external volume is attached to the computer (including inserting CD\/DVDs), the Volume ID is checked against a configurable White List.\u00a0 \u00a0If the volume is listed on the White List, nothing is done.\u00a0 However, if the new volume is not listed, the volume is immediately ejected.\u00a0 This prevents USB drives from being attached without needing to physically destroy the USB port.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There are safety features along with the Endpoint.\u00a0 It can run as Local System making it very difficult for end-users to stop the service.\u00a0 In addition, alerts can be fired if an Endpoint isn\u2019t connected, with the added check to make sure the computer is still pingable (so you don\u2019t get alerts if the computer is turned off for the evening).<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With so many people working from home, the perimeter of corporate data safety has suddenly grown very large, in many cases encompassing employee home computers.\u00a0 \u00a0 Data loss prevention (DLP) was challenging enough already, but now it takes on even more importance. \u00a0 \u00a0 One way that data can escape the corporate network is by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,57,13,42,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-it","category-monitoring","category-pc-security","category-security","category-windows"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6945"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6951,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6945\/revisions\/6951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}