Frank Slootweg wrote in
news
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:
In message , Mr. Man-wai
Chang writes:
[BBC] IBM workers banned from using USB sticks
Full story: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44069488

Staff at IBM have been banned from using removable memory devices
such as USB sticks, SD cards and flash drives.

The possibility of "financial and reputational" damage if staff lost
or misused the devices prompted the decision, reported The Register.

Instead, IBM staff who need to move data around will be encouraged
to do so via an internal network.

The decree banning removable storage acknowledges that complying
with it could be "disruptive".

Losing data

.... more ....


The company I worked for banned them many years ago - for reasons of
(a) concern of theft of secure [either in the government (it was a
defence contractor) or commercial sense] material, and (b) fear of
infection.

Exactly. Same with the little 150K employee computer company I
worked
for. As soon as USB ports showed up on computers, they were made
inoperable. (No card-readers at that time.) That was well before the
year 2000.

Many years ago I used to service some data equipment at a defense
contractor site. I was required to leave my calculator at the security
check-in desk for the same reason. This was long before USB ever came
into existence. And of course, there is the most popular story floating
around about the banning of Furbies, due to their small memory function.
Data loss concerns have been around for a long, long time.