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USB Thumb Drives - Safe?
2:31 PM EDT 8/5/04
This has recently become an issue in our library. Should we allow patrons to use USB thumb drives? Our current policy says that patrons cannot attact/connect their own equipment to library equipment.
In several locations, the CPUs are locked up or simply placed under a desk so accessing a front USB port would be difficult. On the machines (such as our granted Gateways) there is no front USB port and I would not want patrons "messing around" back there.
We have also heard from various sources that especially because of the storage size, USB drives *could* hack into a machine with malious files/intent.
In a perfect world, well, we wouldn't worry because no one would want to hack machines, but more to the point...in a perfect world, we would have front USB ports, Centurion Guard and the PAC tool on all public access machines. But since its not a perfect world, is allowing access safe? How about on a machine that only has PAC installed?
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Re: USB Thumb Drives - Safe?
9:09 AM EDT 8/10/04
as a reply to Liz Harman.
We don't allow them at present for some of the same reasons, though we do get requests for them upon occasion. One other reason we don't allow them is due to the possible increased level of staff involvement. Having to support floppy issues is bad enough, but if a patron comes in having problems with their thumb drive, it just adds another task for an already over burdened staff.
Now with you having Centurion Guard (we don't), you don't have as much to worry about security wise. In our case, I have an image of the hard drive stored on the Content Server and also a clone of the hard drive on another drive that I can slip into the machine. With the Ghost boot disks, I can restore the computer in under 40 minutes.
If you do decide to pursue using them, you can buy extra usb ports that fit into an empty drive bay in the front of your computers. Almost all major computer retailers online have them and they average about $25 each.
I suppose what it boils down to is how much work you are willing to put into it if someone does break things. In your case, it is pretty unlikely, but a possibility still exists.
Wendell
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