USB Antivirus: Not Necessary Right Now
By Dean • Nov 11th, 2008 • Category: USBIt has been observed that viruses and other types of attacks that spread via mobile storage devices like USB drives are almost negligible, as compared to the other sources of malware. Therefore, the security vendors such as F-secure and Trend Micro are in no rush to develop anti virus solutions for USB.
A few months back SanDisk, the global manufacturer of flash based products had announced its Cruzer range of enterprise USB drives, which include the high security Sandisk Cruzer Professional, will be equipped with antivirus protection from McAfee. However, Anthony Ung, marketing manager for the Asia-Pacific region of Trend Micro has pointed out that all this is not necessary at this point in time, since most security threats originate from the Internet and a very few spread via the USB devices.
Chia Wing Fei, security response manager at F-Secure Security Labs also had the same opinion. Instead of developing whole new applications for USB security, the alternate methods should be implemented. Chia said, “A common security practice that many organizations implement is to disable the auto-play function of CDs, DVDs or any other removable device. Once this function has been disabled, no automated execution of malware on the removable device such as USB sticks can happen. At the moment, the threats that we face are more prevalent on the Internet and we see more attempts to spread malware over this medium as compared to using removable devices.”
Tags for this article: security, sandisk, malware
Sure, F-secure and Trend micro are going to say that it is necessary even if they don’t have it.
I say it is a must – remember the astronaut that introduced a virus to the International space station through his flash drive?
Go SanDisk and McAfee – a great idea!
It sounds like somebody has an interest that you don’t buy antivirus drives…I mean there was that whole NASA space station thing where an astronaut brought an infected USB drive to the space station and infected the whole system there. There are probably many more such examples, but who would publicize them…this SanDisk McAfee drive sounds great.