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I thought about disabling ports, and on some machines I do, but for the most part there would be mutiny if people couldn't charge their phones or use USB sticks

I thought about disabling ports, and on some machines I do, but for the most part there would be mutiny if people couldn't charge their phones or use USB sticks for legitimate purposes. I try instead to make sure everyone is skeptical and weary of everything technology related+the corporate network. I'm in the process of creating a USB drop-test script for employee training purposes. Awareness and preparedness training has been one of my best investments of time and energy with a staggering ROI. My team recently passed my last phishing test 100%.

fencepost 7y ago
For phone and device charging, go purchase a bunch of reputable 2 - 4 port chargers and cables and set a policy that phones at other devices should never be plugged into computers. If you want to really dissuade people, add to the policy that the full contents of any phone plugged into a company computer may be silently downloaded and examined by IT. If the corporate network you're talking about is Windows Active Directory based then I believe that there are Group Policy settings to only allow connection of encrypted external drives. I'm not sure when this was introduced, and it might only be on Windows 10, but hopefully at this point most businesses are either already there or moving in that direction.
- zelon88 7y ago
  The problem is a lot of manufacturing equipment is either not networked, or not networkable. A lot of equipment relies on USB interfaces to load/store programs. Disabling USB ports across the board is not practical. And with some of the crazy hardware[1] out there for retrofitting antique equipment with modern functionality; blanket encryption is not always possible either. The cited USB emulator requires that the USB stick be formatted into hundreds of minuscule FAT partitions, simulating floppy disks images and all the documentation comes in one language: Engrish. After that the machines will only load programs that follow a certain naming convention/format/ect... [1]http://www.gotekemulator.com/ http://www.gotekemulator.com/ So the choices for many organizations are; a) upgrade dozens of custom pieces manufacturing equipment so that they're securely networkable at astronomical cost (if it's even possible). b) Air-gap all the old scary stuff running on ancient OSs & proprietary PLC drivers from god-knows-where and only talk to them via USB/direct interfaces and worry about them when they break.

fencepost 7y ago

For phone and device charging, go purchase a bunch of reputable 2 - 4 port chargers and cables and set a policy that phones at other devices should never be plugged into computers. If you want to really dissuade people, add to the policy that the full contents of any phone plugged into a company computer may be silently downloaded and examined by IT. If the corporate network you're talking about is Windows Active Directory based then I believe that there are Group Policy settings to only allow connection of encrypted external drives. I'm not sure when this was introduced, and it might only be on Windows 10, but hopefully at this point most businesses are either already there or moving in that direction.

zelon88 7y ago
The problem is a lot of manufacturing equipment is either not networked, or not networkable. A lot of equipment relies on USB interfaces to load/store programs. Disabling USB ports across the board is not practical. And with some of the crazy hardware[1] out there for retrofitting antique equipment with modern functionality; blanket encryption is not always possible either. The cited USB emulator requires that the USB stick be formatted into hundreds of minuscule FAT partitions, simulating floppy disks images and all the documentation comes in one language: Engrish. After that the machines will only load programs that follow a certain naming convention/format/ect... [1]http://www.gotekemulator.com/ http://www.gotekemulator.com/ So the choices for many organizations are; a) upgrade dozens of custom pieces manufacturing equipment so that they're securely networkable at astronomical cost (if it's even possible). b) Air-gap all the old scary stuff running on ancient OSs & proprietary PLC drivers from god-knows-where and only talk to them via USB/direct interfaces and worry about them when they break.