A security nightmare waiting to happen

Filed in archive Planning/Strategy , Security , Technology on February 19, 2006

These two articles combine to make me (with my security admin hat on) very, very nervous.

Seagate plans 12GB music player/cell-phone drive

Back up your PC -- to your phone?

laptops are bad enough - letting people walk around outside the building with little or no control over what data they put on their laptops, but at least people are a little more careful with their laptops. USB drives aren't that great either, but people tend to leave them in their briefcase or laptop bag - it doesn't get taken out at random and played with. Phones, however, are being lost almost constantly. Worse, they're also being found.

12 gig is enough space to hold a lot of secrets.

Any competent security admin is pretty damned secure against hostile data theft attempts against his or her systems, but how can we prevent our users from just copying stuff onto their phones, then losing them at a bar?