USB key drives

Hi:

This issue has ***Series i ramifications***. We have a number of important 
DB2 files with confidential data that would fit quite nicely onto many new 
USB key drives without being compressed into a SAVF. With all the doors 
being opened for access to Series i data "from the outside", anyone with a 
little extra authority and a current key drive can walk away with a 
frightening range of stuff. Physical access as security has gone from 
being marginally useful to being a terrible and dangerous joke.

Anyway, at least one pundit I read somewhere has an entire Linux distro 
installed on a USB key drive, with all important programs (network 
connection of course, browser, e-mail, text editor, etc.) ready to run. He 
can supposedly sit down at a friend's computer, reboot off the key drive, 
use Linux, and log off leaving the computer essentially untouched.

As to why the different treatment of platters and solid state, it is 
because there is a tremendous distinction in one area; size. Solid state 
drives are extremely compact and frequently disguised as other gadgets. 
The largest available devices are gaining capacity at breakneck speed and 
with only tolerable increases in price. The issue is not technology, but 
security. It just isn't easy to walk off with a reasonably priced 
platter-based device in one's pocket.

I am not defending Microsoft's "no choice" elimination of USB key drive 
backups. "Isn't easy" is a far cry from "isn't possible." But the folks in 
Redmond have been, properly, excoriated for their past "convenience trumps 
security" approach to a lot of things. This swings the pendulum the other 
way. It isn't all that rational, but it certainly is *not* on my list of 
reasons for not moving to Vista.

Darrell

Darrell A. Martin  -  630-754-2141
Manager, Computer Operations
dmartin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 03/21/2007 02:04:54 PM:

Are  USB Drives  bootable?
Say   I  want to  boot of the USB  which is an image  copy of  my C 

drive.

At 07:24 AM 3/21/2007, you wrote:

Good info, but it doesn't address my question:  Why should it matter at
all if the drive is solid state or platter-based?

[SNIP]



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