NASA bans some removable storage devices

NASA has instructed employees not to use personally owned thumb drives or other forms of removable media on government computer systems, but stopped short of a ban as comprehensive as that issued by the Defense Department earlier this month.

Comment on this article in The Forum.In a Nov. 21 memorandum to employees, NASA Chief Information Officer Jonathan Pettus noted that thumb drives and other media can infect systems with malicious code or remove sensitive data such as usernames, passwords and encryption keys from computer systems.

To mitigate that risk, Pettus directed employees not to:

• Use personally owned removable media devices in government-owned systems,

• Use government-owned removable media devices on personal machines or machines that do not belong to your agency, department, or organization, or,

• Put unknown removable media devices into any system.

Pettus added that employees should keep systems updated with the latest patches and antivirus signatures.

NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz said the directive was precautionary, reflected best security practices and had no expiration date. "NASA constantly is looking for ways to improve IT security and safeguard agency information and systems," she said.

The memo comes on the heels of the Pentagon's temporary ban on the use of thumb drives and all other removable storage devices on its networks. "We are aware of a global virus for which there are some public alerts….We've seen some of this on our networks," Defense spokesman Bryan Whitman said on Friday. "We're taking steps to identify and mitigate the virus." Whitman, however, did not address the ban on thumb drives, contained in an order issued by the Strategic Command on Nov. 14.