Ever since the news of ‘Navy War room leaks‘ broke out in 2006 , pen-drive phobia reached such proportions that many senior officers would not touch a pen drive with a barge pole. Ironically use of CDs increased though they can be as much of security hazard as a pen drive. Had pen drives not been available probably CD or some other media would have been used to steal info.
There are many myths related to pen drives, that they cause virus infection, security leaks and loss of data.
Let us do a reality check. Is a CD or DVD any more secure than a pen drive ? I can hear the users saying ” a pen drive is inherently insecure as it allows easy reading and writing ”
Your work environment should be customisable to the extent that if you want to open a window or close a window, whenever you want, the way you want, you should be able to do it. Everyone has the basic common sense to know when to open a window (not MS Windows) and by how much. So is it with a pen drive. If only a user is trusted to know how to partition, format and configure a pen drive, it is very very safe and secure.
People do not know much about pen drives. The other day, I had gone to the market to take a printout. As I plugged in my pen drive into a Windows machine, the file I wanted to print wouldn’t show up. I realised that the entire partition was invisible to Windows. When I explained the problem to the guy there, he sagely pronounced ” only hard drives have partitions and pen drives don’t ” It sounded absurd to me as I have always used pen drives with multiple partitions. To confirm, I went to the adjacent shop and tried another Machine. One windows machine is as dumb as another, and this time, a young boy, may be tenth pass (or tenth fail ?) gave an exasperated look and said,”Uncle, ek pen drive, ek hi partition (one pen drive, one partition”
Coming back to reality check, whenever I bought a pen drive, the first thing I did was to partition it and format it as per my requirement. It had a bootable partition (if required), a small secure partition with 128 bit encryption and a large general purpose data partition for data . This way, data is secure and if you want to protect the drive from virus attack, you can make it read only as well.
Why is every one not using it ? At the risk of sounding too condescending , I would say ‘ due to ignorance’. Manufacturers of pen drives and the dominant OS, M$ would want us to believe that you cannot customize a pen drive. The main threat is that the warranty would become Null and Void.
How to do it ? One word answer is “Linux”. I tried some googling on how to do it through M$. All solutions appear too complex and involved third party, propriety software.
‘Disks’ is a simple free utility which is part of ubuntu installation. Here’s a snap shot of my usb drive partions. I normally have a small secure portion and a large general purpose portion.
The reality is that 80 % of Computers have M$. So is it an advantage or a disadvantage to partition a disk ? I would say it is a definitly a step in the right direction for safety and security.
In a multi-partitioned disk, Windows sees just the first partition. So when using a M$ Machine I just have to have a very small first partition . What I have realised is that my pen drives are really safe from M$ virus. How can a virus attack when the entire partition is Invisible ? The real virus or the threat is the Windows Operating System, and blaming a pen drive is like shooting a messenger. Avoid M$ and you avoid Virus.
If only everyone uses Linux Machines and Linux partitioned Pen Drives, the Infotech world will be safer, much more secure and a lot more happier. Is the IT God listening ? Om Computaraya namaha ! Thathastu !