Unprotected Ports: Unthinkable Yesterday, Nearly Universal Today

People have known for a long, long time that a USB port security locking device is a big deal – long before these devices weren’t even available. The need for port security finds its roots in the physical port security that guard our waterways. As a point of reference, look at the old cannon and 12-foot-thick brick walls of the Battery at the foot of Manhattan, overlooking New York Harbor. Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, is another example, as is Fort Sullivan in Savannah, Georgia. Even the tiny, scenic ports of the Caribbean are flanked by frowning forts and old iron guns.

So, how does this apply to computing? There is an old notion that there was more computing power in a Texas Instruments calculator of the 1970s than in the Mercury space capsules in which Astronauts first took flight in the 1960s. In line with that idea is the fact that there’s more commerce, data, information, and communication flowing through USB data ports today than all the coastal seaports of history. And yet most of those data ports have no USB port security locking device. They are utterly unprotected.

The failure to protect ports with a USB port security locking device is like locking every window, installing every known electronic security device, but leaving the front door wide open. Without an effective USB port security locking device, every USB port in your data network or information system is an open invitation to malware, spyware, ransomware, viruses, and all manner of disruptive events that could bring your operations to a halt and cost loads of time and money.

This makes no sense, but here it is. Those USB ports are yawning wide open even while companies spend $170 billion a year on cyber defense. Why? Because, for some reason, the popular imagination – and even the professional opinion to a large extent – has focused almost exclusively on cybersecurity threats that arrive online, from the cloud, or from Wi-Fi connections. How else could the USB port security locking device be so nearly overlooked?

That’s the amazing disparity, the counter-intuitive condition and the state of play in cybersecurity. All the tricky things are the subject of a kind of digital arms race, with weapons and defenses raising point and counterpoint in a brilliant and energetic dialogue. The sneaky ways in are getting all the attention, and, as we said, the front door is wide open, even though a USB port security locking device can be had for just a few dollars.

Why Do Your USB Ports Matter?

The reasons that USB ports demand immediate attention and call for an effective USB port security locking device is that they are open not only to hostile actors, but also, and perhaps even more important, to casual contamination from well-meaning people – even and especially from associates within your own organization.

In government defense studies, university studies, and in high-profile instances from real-life experience, even the most highly trained, well-indoctrinated associates don’t hesitate to pop a thumb drive into a USB port at work – even when work is highly-sensitive or classified, and even if they just found the thumb drive in the parking lot. The true stories of cyber-espionage and cyber-sabotage that began just this way, with a “found” thumb drive introduced by an innocent but heedless associate, have had historic impact.

Mobile data devices, such as smart phones, are an even bigger hazard when it comes to casual contamination. Every one of them is like a digital Petri dish, gathering viruses and unwanted intrusions from the farthest reaches of the Web. Yet, who hesitates to plug that smart phone in at work, to sync or to charge?

If only your vital computer information system and digital network could build up the immune system of a grade-school teacher, the world would stand a better chance of avoiding disruptions to the systems and services that keep us going, including electrical supply and other public utilities, financial services and e-commerce, and national defense. The genius of the human body, though, in mobilizing an effective response to intrusions has not yet been cultivated in the world of cyber defense. The most effective measure is still to keep the intrusion out in the first place, and that calls for a USB port security locking device and the elements that surround and support it.

When a USB port security locking device is so effective, simple, and readily available, why, then, are they not in use all around us? The answer is simply a new chapter of an old story. The old story is human nature; the new chapter is the digital age.

The Need for a USB Port Security Locking Device

We noticed from the earliest days, for example, that people would say things to each other in emails that they would never say face to face or write in a letter. People who were paying attention observed that the “non-physical space” of the digital world brought with it a paradoxical sense of “public privacy.” People wrote emails as if they were private and individual, and yet shared them widely – knowingly by “cc-ing” or thoughtlessly by overlooking the fact that emails last and can also be forwarded. This illusion that the digital space was one that we could control led sometimes to controversy and misunderstanding at every level. Human beings had never experienced an environment like this, and we lacked the sense of protocols that smooths our interactions elsewhere.

The other human-nature element in play here is our often-demonstrated capacity to put hazards, risk, or threats in an illogical perspective. People fear the airline flight, but not the drive to the airport, which proves to be significantly more dangerous, for example.

These same tendencies have prompted people to plug pernicious “found” flash drives into vital data systems, and to charge or sync their personal mobile device at work. The same kind of laps of logic has led to the physical sector of the cyber defense perimeter to remain almost completely unguarded, even though the USB port security locking device is effective, affordable, and readily available at The Connectivity Center, which offers an evolving array of USB port blockers, network port locks, fiber optic port locks, and dozens of other devices that overcome these the of attack or infection.

In addition, the Smart Keeper series offers port blocking with the additional feature of serialized keys that enable access only from authorized users. With Smart Keeper, you can make sure that access goes only to those persons with “need to know” and “need to use” authority within your organization, without the expense and complication of Network Access Controls.

The cables that connect computers in your network are another point of vulnerability, because a malicious user can unplug a device from the opposite end of a tethered cable. With Link Lock connectors from The Connectivity Center, this other way into your network can be effectively secured. Adding yet another layer of computer network and information security is the Link Lock Hub, which not only serves as a secure USB hub for your attached USB device, but also locks your devices so that they cannot be removed without authorized access.

The USB port security locking device is only one of the essential network security devices you can get from The Connectivity Center that ensure the continual flow of vital data on which your enterprise depends.