USBs' Giant Sucking Sound

It's what you can't see that could hurt the most: 73 percent of respondents in a new survey to be released on Monday by Senforce Technologies say their organization houses critical data on removable devices such as laptops, thumb drives, and iPods, Dark Reading has learned.

Awareness was indeed the theme of the results of the survey, which polled over 300 attendees at the recent InfoSec and FOSE trade shows, as 46 percent said their organization either doesn't have -- or they are are unaware if it has -- a comprehensive endpoint security strategy. Although the survey was conducted by an endpoint security product vendor, it basically reinforces a point made over and over these days, as organizations are slowly waking up to the problem of laptops that go home with their users, as well as the thumb drives that come into the office with them.

According to Senforce, 18 percent of the respondents at InfoSec said nearly half of their organization's data sit at the endpoint, and 17 percent of the FOSE respondents said the same.

The security of portable media was also a hot topic at this week's Storage Networking World conference in San Diego, where a group of panelists said the biggest problem is a lack of security for portable media such as USB drives. (See Users Confess Security Fears.)

Get the full story at Dark Reading.Kelly Jackson Higgins, Senior Editor, Dark Reading