TechWeb | News | Pod Slurping Dangerous To Enterprises: Nearly a year ago, an analyst from Gartner recommended that enterprises should think about banning Apple's iPods -- and similar small-sized portable storage devices -- for fear of data walking out the door.

What I would have recommended is that organisations use real security for sensitive documents. Staff and intruders have been able to do everything described here since computers had floppy drives... meaning basically the whole time computers have been in general use.

Suddenly getting tense about it now is stupid - just because the storage device is nifty and popular doesn't make it any different from any other portable storage device. Word documents do not require gigs worth of storage space, hell they still fit on floppy disks!

If you want to prevent data theft, store your data in secured locations. Workstation hard drives are not secure. In fact, the industry joke is the only secure computer is the one that is switched off, unplugged and locked in a safe. Even then, the joke isn't talking about the physical security of the box.