InsideDefense.com and Wired.com today reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) has lifted last year’s ban on the use of removable storage devices inside the Department of Defense.
USB flash drives and other removable storage devices were banned by the DoD in November 2008 after a military network was infected by the Agent.btz worm, which was introduced into the network from a USB flash drive.
The Wired.com article is incorrect in its assertion that STRATCOM has not addressed the problem of spreading viruses from removable media devices. IronKey and other vendors of hardware encrypted secure storage have been working with Joint Task Force – Global Network Operations (JTF-GNO) at STRATCOM to develop technical and operational requirements for preventing malware from infecting removable storage devices, and from migrating from devices onto networks.
IronKey partnered with Tresys who has a File Sanitization Tool designed to clean devices from malware when moved between different government networks.
IronKey Enterprise devices also feature an anti-malware scanner, to ensure that files stored on IronKeys do not have malware. IronKey devices also have active anti-malware capabilities preventing tampering with the autorun.inf on the device, which prevents malware from spreading from devices onto host computers.
