[citation][nom]house70[/nom]Info will be transmitted via phones, like in WW2. Of course, wireless phones will be banned, as they can be intercepted easily. We're talking about good 'ol corded phones, preferably with a crankshaft to generate their own power.Also, don't forget pigeons; they can be used for data transmission, as it has been proven before.Typical hunker-down self-crippling move that will only serve the "enemy".[/citation]
Lots of private companies that deal with very sensitive data (i.e. customer credit cards and such) have a simliar policy in place. One of my former employers required you to have special permission to bring in any external media, be it a flash drive, or cd/dvd. This never hindered anything because data was available via network or sent through email. Is this step 100% fool proof? no. But it certainly makes it harder to get data outside the company and do it in a way that you don't get caught.
[citation][nom]iNiNe5[/nom]uhhhh... if the concern is people bringing home USB thumb drives, why not just require you to return the USB before you leave? they do that at libraries. you can't carry out Volume 3 of the encyclopedia. the detector goes off and the librarian asks you to surrender the book. it;s been done for years now, since my kindergarten days. [/citation]
The problem with that is you need to put RFID tags on the flash drives. RFID alarms can be beaten...easily. Or you take the simple approach. go to walmart, buy your own flash drive and sneak it onsite. They don't have a magic "detect flash media" machine to my knowledge. Plus, flash media is can be made so small, that they are hard to find. You have to have rules in place that prevent people from brining these types of things near sensitive data and SERIOUS consquences for anybody that fails to abide by those rules. You'll never stop all data leaks, but you can certainly make the risk higher than the gain.