How to Block USB Devices – USB Access Control (Video)

This tutorial will show you how to block USB devices such as external hard drives, flash drives, and other removable media using AccessPatrol, an endpoint security software developed by CurrentWare Inc.

Video Transcript

Hi there welcome to the CurrentWare video where today we will show you how to block employees from using USB devices at work. CurrentWare has been a leading provider of Internet restriction, employee productivity, and endpoint management software for over 15 years.

Software agent installation

We’re excited to show you the administrative console today. In order to block employees from using USB devices at work you’d first be required to install the CurrentWare agent on each of your employee’s computers.

You can either do this by local or remote client install. Once the installation is complete the different computers and users will show up on the left side of the screen. The departments and groupings will be based on the directories that you assign for the CurrentWare console.

In this example, we have the administrator, development, marketing, and three other folders available. Once this is configured you have the ability to determine which devices are blocked or allowed using our AccessPatrol solution.

Configure USB device permissions

AccessPatrol - List of devices permissions that can be controlled.

When we click into the device blocking section you can see the different devices that are available: Storage, wireless, and different ports. You have the simple ability to click into USB and choose between full access, read-only, or no access. No access would mean that no employee in that directory has access to use their USB

As you can see on the left side there are a lot more configuration options available. With the prevalence of cell phones, external hard drives, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi, many IT departments have chosen to block these endpoints from being available for employees today.

USB forensics: Device usage reports

AccessPatrol Allowed vs Denied report with 13 different devices listed.

In addition, on AccessPatrol you have the ability for device reporting. You can see the different files that are transferred between devices or if there are any block devices you have the ability to actually see which ones were plugged in.

In this example, we can see Brandon’s access of blocked devices. We’re able to see that although USB devices were blocked for Brandon he actually tried to plug in USB devices many times. AccessPatrol has many different ways to configure reports but also set up different device access for users, groupings, and departments.

Conclusion

We hope you found this demo useful and we’d be glad to show you more about AccessPatrol and the benefits that CurrentWare can provide by visiting CurrentWare.com. A 14-day free trial the software is also available. Thank you for watching!

Dale Strickland

Dale Strickland is a Marketing Coordinator for CurrentWare, a global provider of endpoint security and employee monitoring software. Dale’s diverse multimedia background allows him the opportunity to produce a variety of content for CurrentWare including blogs, infographics, videos, eBooks, and social media shareables.