When we set-up our anti virus and anti spyware software these days we often forget about a potentially major source of infection, that is our USB data sticks. Automatic scans miss these devices because we don't take steps to include scanning them in our maintenance routines.
A friend of mine told me recently of a major incident in which a virus worm in fected 70 pc workstations in his college out of a possible 1000 before it was detected. This virus had entered the network from a USB stick and propagated internally accross the network infecting the server before it was detected.
While USB sticks and removable drives of all types are not automatically scanned by your anti-virus software they remain a threat to networks, it behoves us to become used to routinely scanning these items for our own safety. The fact that these devices are so portable and are often used casually in multiple machines makes them an ideal vector for virus and malware infection, be warned.
