How to prevent USB access in windows machines

Question

We would like to prevent USB access to machines (primarily Windows XP, 2003 machines) so that it would not be possible for employees to copy anything from the disk to a pen drive.

Answer 1

You can do this using Group Policy Preferences.

See here for more info.

Answer 2

You can disable USB ports in Device Manager, but it will affect administrators as well.

Answer 3

At my current job, we use Lumension Endpoint Security (http://www.lumension.com/). It is annoying as hell, which is exactly what it is supposed to do, so yes, it works well.

Answer 4

I would have said disabling USB ports too, but bear in tmind if your mouse/keyboard/webcam are usb this will disable them too.

Answer 5

I used devicelock in the past, it does the job but it was a bit tricky to setup and maintein

http://www.devicelock.com/dl/

Answer 6

Microsoft provides an Administrative template to restrict USB drives on 2003/XP machines. To make the administrative template available in Group Policy Management, you will need to paste the administrative template text into a "RestrictDrives.adm" file, save it, and follow the instructions under the links in the "More Information" section.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555324