Military News
02-19-2010, 08:11 PM
02-19-2010 05:02 PM
Fifteen months after banning all thumb drives, the military says it is ready to approve “limited use” of some thumb drives again. But the rules for using them are strict, and they’re not the same old thumb drives.
“Specific thumb drives” and accompanying “kits” that use hardware and software to scrub data of viruses and other malware are being prepared for shipment to Afghanistan and Iraq, said Vice Adm. Carl Mauney, deputy commander of U.S. Strategic Command.
At present, the military has only a few dozen “laboratory-built” kits, Mauney said Friday, so initially the use of thumb drives will be very limited.
An information security industry official described the kits as Defense Department “malware scrubbing kiosks.”
The new drives and their cleaning kits are headed to combat areas, “Afghanistan in particular,” Mauney said. They are expected to prove useful at combat command centers and analysis centers, he said.
In a statement issued earlier Feb. 19, Strategic Command spelled out some of the new rules on thumb drive use:
• “Only properly inventoried, government-procured and owned devices will be allowed for use in DoD’s information systems.”
• “Personally-owned devices are prohibited on all DoD networks and computers.”
• The new government-owned and -approved drives cannot be used in personal or other nongovernment computers or networks without specific approval.
• Thumb drives and other flash media are to be used “only as a last resort” for transferring information from computer to computer or from place to place. When other network resources are available, they should be used instead.
The new thumb drive rules were issued Feb. 12 by the Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations, which operates and defends military computer networks.
And to make sure the rules are followed, “randomly selected users and drives will be subject to periodic auditing,” the Strategic Command said.
“This is about protecting the DoD networks,” said Timothy Madden, a spokesman for the joint task force.
It will be up to commanders to determine specifically when thumb drives and other flash media can be used in their organizations, Mauney said. During the ban, troops developed ways to operate effectively without thumb drives, so some commanders might opt not to use them again, he said.
For years, thumb drives were widely used by U.S. troops for storing information ranging from maintenance manuals to mission plans to PowerPoint presentations. Their small size and large storage capacity made them convenient for transferring information from office to office, computer to computer and operations center to aircraft.
But in November 2008, thumb drives containing viruses infected and disrupted military networks in U.S. Central Command, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan, prompting the thumb drive ban.
And it wasn’t just thumb drives. Memory sticks, flash memory cards, digital cameras, music players, personal digital assistants and other devices with digital memories could no longer be plugged into military computers.
But troops say that thumb drives were missed the most. A 10-gigabyte drive the size of a thumb can hold digital data equivalent to 1,500 books.
Strategic Command won’t provide much technical detail about its “government procured and owned” thumb drives, but industry officials who are familiar with them said they include multiple security features.
The drives will require a password or some other form of identification, such as a common access card or a fingerprint, to be used, one official said.
The information stored on them will be encrypted, two information security officials said.
Other features may include anti-virus software that resides in the drive, and security features that prevent certain kinds of data from being copied or forwarded from the drive. Security features also may block users from saving unapproved information on the drives, they said.
More... (http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2010/02/Copy of dn_021910_thumb2_web/)
[Clicking on more will open up a popup box with the complete news story from the news source. MilitaryWoman.org is not responsible for content.]
Fifteen months after banning all thumb drives, the military says it is ready to approve “limited use” of some thumb drives again. But the rules for using them are strict, and they’re not the same old thumb drives.
“Specific thumb drives” and accompanying “kits” that use hardware and software to scrub data of viruses and other malware are being prepared for shipment to Afghanistan and Iraq, said Vice Adm. Carl Mauney, deputy commander of U.S. Strategic Command.
At present, the military has only a few dozen “laboratory-built” kits, Mauney said Friday, so initially the use of thumb drives will be very limited.
An information security industry official described the kits as Defense Department “malware scrubbing kiosks.”
The new drives and their cleaning kits are headed to combat areas, “Afghanistan in particular,” Mauney said. They are expected to prove useful at combat command centers and analysis centers, he said.
In a statement issued earlier Feb. 19, Strategic Command spelled out some of the new rules on thumb drive use:
• “Only properly inventoried, government-procured and owned devices will be allowed for use in DoD’s information systems.”
• “Personally-owned devices are prohibited on all DoD networks and computers.”
• The new government-owned and -approved drives cannot be used in personal or other nongovernment computers or networks without specific approval.
• Thumb drives and other flash media are to be used “only as a last resort” for transferring information from computer to computer or from place to place. When other network resources are available, they should be used instead.
The new thumb drive rules were issued Feb. 12 by the Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations, which operates and defends military computer networks.
And to make sure the rules are followed, “randomly selected users and drives will be subject to periodic auditing,” the Strategic Command said.
“This is about protecting the DoD networks,” said Timothy Madden, a spokesman for the joint task force.
It will be up to commanders to determine specifically when thumb drives and other flash media can be used in their organizations, Mauney said. During the ban, troops developed ways to operate effectively without thumb drives, so some commanders might opt not to use them again, he said.
For years, thumb drives were widely used by U.S. troops for storing information ranging from maintenance manuals to mission plans to PowerPoint presentations. Their small size and large storage capacity made them convenient for transferring information from office to office, computer to computer and operations center to aircraft.
But in November 2008, thumb drives containing viruses infected and disrupted military networks in U.S. Central Command, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan, prompting the thumb drive ban.
And it wasn’t just thumb drives. Memory sticks, flash memory cards, digital cameras, music players, personal digital assistants and other devices with digital memories could no longer be plugged into military computers.
But troops say that thumb drives were missed the most. A 10-gigabyte drive the size of a thumb can hold digital data equivalent to 1,500 books.
Strategic Command won’t provide much technical detail about its “government procured and owned” thumb drives, but industry officials who are familiar with them said they include multiple security features.
The drives will require a password or some other form of identification, such as a common access card or a fingerprint, to be used, one official said.
The information stored on them will be encrypted, two information security officials said.
Other features may include anti-virus software that resides in the drive, and security features that prevent certain kinds of data from being copied or forwarded from the drive. Security features also may block users from saving unapproved information on the drives, they said.
More... (http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2010/02/Copy of dn_021910_thumb2_web/)
[Clicking on more will open up a popup box with the complete news story from the news source. MilitaryWoman.org is not responsible for content.]