[MW Forums]

Security analysts weigh in on whether MP3 player manufacturers like Apple need to add security features to their devices to discourage data theft in corporate environments. more

[doglesby]

Why would you reprint this article, and why now? This has already been taken to task and earned the author and her editors Jackasses of the week at Daring Fireball. It's old news and it's crap.
If you need to protect your data, you need to protect your data. The iPod is one of many threats and it makes no sense to ask Apple to secure one possible vector.

[tony_d]

Quote: But then I remembered that iPods do not come out of their shipping containers with the ability to be used as data drives. The user must explicitly turn that function on in iTunes. To that end, it seems to me that Apple has already gone one step beyond other drive manufacturers.
End of arguement.
It seems to me that securing a company's data is the responsibilty of the company (although if its easy to steal something it still doesn't make it right.) I'm sure someone can write a program that will not allow a external drive (whether its an iPod or not) to mount without an appropriate password.

[leicaman]

I had drinks with one of Apple's people in iPod marketing (along with a MacCentral staffer) at the House of Blues in L.A. a couple of years ago. I told him a story about how I used my iPod to save the day when my PowerBooks' hard drive filled up during a shoot in Brazil. Because I was able to transfer my photos to my 1st generation iPod, to make room on the laptop, I was able to shoot three more days to finish the job.
The Apple executives' response?
'iPods can do that?"
/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[adobephile]

It's bad enough when law enforcement, the legislature, and the judicial system are handed the task of "forcing" people to be "good." Now the target is manufacturers of machines??!!!
What happened to individual responsibility and morals? Oh yes. In case no one has noticed, we've been under attack from within since the '40s by an insidious enemy. Religion is now only for old people who are about to die off soon anyway. Too many health care professionals deal more in symptom suppression than in cures. Too many teachers are more like behavior police than educators.
So prescriptions are somehow supposed to replace nutrition? Are second and third mortgages supposed to replace jobs, wages, and savings?
Ah yes, the masses would be easier to control if everyone was sick, poor, and stupid. Hmmm. Police state here we come!!

[jchapman]

The article's point (if you remove the iPod bashing) basically boils down to "hard drives can store data, external hard drives make that data mobile, so all external hard drive makers must provide corporations a means to prevent this from happening". If anyone is paying attention, that is a moronic argument.
Hey MacWorld, if this is the kind of journalistic thinking that your editors approve of, I'll be more than happy to stop visiting.

[doglesby]

This story must have been spawned by someone watching The Transporter 2.

[OM_user]

I have to agree with everyone's statements here. I mean, external hard drives can copy data from a computer. Wow! What a revelation! Just because people carry iPods around does not make them any more or less of a threat to data stealing. It's up to a company to find ways to secure its data. And honestly, good luck with that one! If data leaving the office is such a concern, they should just take everyones laptops away. Yeah, that'll go over well.
In Mac OS X, with an Open Directory setup and Macintosh Manager/managed clients, you can set up your clients to not have the privilege of mounting external drives, and even from using CDs/DVDs, but I don't know of many installations outside of a school scenario where that would make much sense. It's kinda like setting up email accounts that can only send and receive email to/from other people in the company (to, y'know, prevent spam). You might be able to do it, but at what cost of productivity for your users?

[MacGeek1955]

They can always listen to internet radio and watch movies on their company's bandwidth. There should be plenty of bandwidth for everyone to listen to internet radio and watch streaming movies on their work computers.
I used to work with a guy a few years ago that listened to Rush Limbaugh all day long at work. Another guy listened to some financial radio shows. 2 people listening to internet radio won't drag down a T-1, but try 100 or 1000. I say let them have their iPods and loosen up about such things. The miniature flash drives and even camera drives can do the same evil things easier than iPods. Besides with Leopard we can use flash memory for increasing productivity.
Besides, why would anyone worry about an iPod as a security problem when most coporations use Windows and to top that off they let execs drive around with millions of credit card numbers on laptops sitting in their cars? I think they need to close some Windows before they start worrying about iPods.

[DocMacPS]

"One million customer accounts - In your pocket!" what a great slogan.
Clearly there's an ideal opportunity to write programs to take advantage of this: 1. "Utilizing breakthrough proprietary compression methods, iNab Plus allows you to store tens of thousand more customer records on your iPod -- while still leaving room for your favorite music." Or, 2. "Ease your worries getting past your company's security desk. With just a single click, iCloak turns ANY critical corporate data file into a MP3 or AAC music file to store on your iPod. And, our completely DRM-FREE file format makes them easy to share with friends and family!"

[mdawson]

Personal responsibility is definitely going the way of the dodo. Religion is unnecessary in the modern erawe have far better ways to understand the world around us and such matters are ultimately personal, but the point about the role of government, health care, education and now the shifting of personal responsibility onto OEMs is well stated. We are definitely headed toward a society where everyone is to blame except the perpetrator, education is replaced by assimilation, males are emasculated to fit feminine ideals, entertainment is only available to those that can afford the pay-per-view/listen model, privacy is a myth, healthcare becomes no more than pop-a-pill and the standard of living drops to that of a developing nation because all of the professional and skilled labor positions are outsourced to persons in developing nations that are willing to spend every waking hour as slaves to corporations for fast food wages.

[krzymac]

Seems like the whole world has gone completely mad. I can't believe someone took the time to point their boring fingers at the iPod. Why not FlashDrives? They are up to 8gigs and more and are much more easily concealed than an iPod. Has anyone approach the hundreds of companies that sell FlashDrives to secure them? I sure hope they will be included in the next articles about employees stealing company data. Did they ban 1.44mb floppies?....I surely can't remember, but I had hundreds of them in my desk taking up space. Really, isn't there something more important to report on...I would surely hope so! Maybe making church mandatory or presentations on morality might boost morals at our workplace. Then maybe our corporate world would feel more at ease and secure..... /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[flybynight]

This is completely ridiculous! As others have already pointed out, you can do the same thing with a flash drive, blank CD, or (depending on the drive options) Zip disk or gasp a floppy disk! Any removable media is just that - REMOVABLE! Meaning you can take your data (or in this case someone else's data) with you. DUH!

[aestival]

Was this article written by the point-haired boss from Dilbert? The author has an almost astonishing lack of understanding on storage, removable storage, and security, especially on the distinction between security for and against users. Anyway, the fundamental problem is that the corporate world has created a pool of employees who can't be trusted because they are given virtually no job security. Almost makes you think they were morons to sacrifice employee loyalty for profit, but then they were probably morons in the first place, so this is just another nail in the coffin.
Security is impossible when even the people you hire to keep data secure can't be trusted -- doesn't matter whether you keep iPods or any other storage device out, because in the end, data thieves will still be able to march past the gatekeepers with their iPods, since the gatekeepers can be easily bought off.