In the world of security, one can never be too careful. Most people believe that their information is safe or that theft will never happen to them. However, almost everyone who is a victim of theft wishes they took more precautions to prevent it.
In the world of USBs, personal backups are a given. USBs are one of the most widely used devices to store information electronically, but USBs have one flaw. USBs can be infected just like a normal computer with spyware, malware, and viruses that cannot only steal your databut can also destroy the drive.
With this major security issue in mind, McAfee (a company known for its anti-virus protection software) has just signed an OEM agreement with nearly 2/3 of USB manufacturers to install anti-virus protection to specifically protect the USB flash drive. The manufacturers include Kingston Digital Inc, MXI, Rocky Mountain Ram, SanDisk, SPYRUS, Hagiwara, and Yoggie Security Systems.
With all of these manufacturers on board, McAfee aims to protect data on a USB drive from being infected with malicious software from a host computer. When a USB drive is inserted that hasMcAfee protection software, the USB drive will run a quick scan of the host computer. If any malicious software is detected, then writing permissions to the drive are automatically turned off. With the writing permissions turned off, the USB drive can be accessed and read from, but nothing new can be written to it.
For proof of a computer's vulnerability to viruses, spyware, and malware, we only need to look back at Conficker in 2009. This computer worm spread through some of the most secure, most protected corporate networks. It did so because some employees knowingly or unknowingly had the virus on their personal flash drives. If these flash drives had the McAfee protection, the worm would not have spread itself to the flash drive and would have stopped the corporate infection.