For years, people have used USB sticks to back up their files on an external device. Through doing this they have felt that their files were safe and secure, but they were wrong. Unknowingly they have been exposing their companies to a potential security disaster.
The main problem is that members of a company (even experienced members) use these devices to save important documents, which they will then move to different parts of the company without permission and without any form of data protection, this would mean that the files could become corrupted and infected with malware or even be stolen with ease.
These USBs have another problem as well as people believe they are being security savvy by moving the data, so they are lulled into a false sense of security. Which causes the effect of making people ignore the other security points they would normally follow, when not using the devices, opening them up for virus attacks.
A study done on behalf of Kingston Technology showed that when polling 450 IT staff in the UK from a global total of 3,000, found that 73% of experienced staff used USB drives without permission, with 72% not mentioning if the data was corrupted or lost. Of the whole group, only half even thought to employ some form of security policy to these devices or showed adequate awareness of risk with these devices.