Data theft

Data theft is a growing problem primarily perpetrated by office workers with access to technology such as desktop computers and hand-held devices capable of storing digital information such as USB flash drives, iPods and even digital cameras. Since employees often spend a considerable amount of time developing contacts and confidential and copyrighted information for the company they work for, they often feel they have some right to the information and are inclined to copy and/or delete part of it when they leave the company, or misuse it while they are still in employment.

While most organizations have implemented firewalls and intrusion-detection systems very few take into account the threat from the average employee that copies proprietary data for personal gain or use by another company. A common scenario is where a sales person makes a copy of the contact database for use in their next job. Typically this is a clear violation of their terms of employment.

Types of data theft

Thumbsucking

Thumbsucking, similar to podslurping, is the intentional or unintentional use of a portable USB mass storage device, such as a USB flash drive (or "thumbdrive"), to illicitly download confidential data from a network endpoint.

A USB flash drive was allegedly used to remove without authorization highly-classified documents about the design of U.S. nuclear weapons from a vault at Los Alamos.

The threat of thumbsucking has been amplified for a number of reasons, including the following:

• The storage capacity of portable USB storage devices has increased.
• The cost of high-capacity portable USB storage devices has decreased.
• Networks have grown more dispersed, the number of remote network access points has increased and methods of network connection have expanded, increasing the number of vectors for network infiltration.
• Pod slurping
• Bluesnarfing
• Sneakernet
• Data breach

External links

• USBs' Giant Sucking Sound
• Readers Weigh In: Is the IPod a Threat or a Scapegoat?