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Comment by raesene9 | Hacker News Reader

This is, unfortunately, not really a surprise. There are a lot of companies who, instead of analyzing what data sharing facilities their staff need, then procuring appropriate services to meet those needs, take the approach of "pretending the problem isn't really there"

This inevitably leads to people using inappropriate mechansism like USB sticks, personal cloud sharing etc to get their jobs done.

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What we really need is non-universally compatible storage devices.

Or maybe one day data transfer will be like money wire transfers. Fill out some paperwork, pay $30, you’ll get your data on the other end...

All data will be owned and custodied by government and data banks. One problem is data is much less fungible than money.

At the same time, the lack of even basic protections is alarming. Don't need software controls to lock out USB drives, when there is superglue in the ports.

Unless you also glue the case together, this doesn't solve anything.

It solves the case of non-trained people from "accidentally" using a usb device that could open up data infiltration/exfiltration attempts

I have a mate who used to work for the bit of QinetiQ that wasn't privatized and he mentioned that his new lap top had soldered up USB ports but also had a cd burner that still worked :-)

That's usually the approach taken when you let people vote on non-standard devices that: 1. Will be reused after 2. Do not have any additional protection other than simple android updates, not connected through internet though. But in that case I'd say the problem would be in the phase of delivering those devices, and after, when the results will be printed on a file on an USB that will be moved to other places. This process happened in Italy around one years ago for a referendum vote.

A big hassle in a world of USB keyboards and mice.

In my experience, the usb ports for those were locked down by the manufacturer and would be pretty hard to get at unless you were somewhat determined. The point being that, in this scenario, it (probably) wasn't some hostile agent that exfiltrated this data, but a unknowing employee

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