USB Protection

 

The Business Hub console offers the USB Protection service with Premium and Ultimate Business Security subscriptions, allowing you to control access to USB flash drives, external HDDs, optical discs, memory cards, digital cameras, smartphones, tablets, and other devices that have storage capabilities. With this service, removable devices won't be able to access your end users’ data without permission.

Support for denying access to smartphones and tablets is currently unavailable for macOS devices.

Requirements

The Business Agent will install the service. Therefore, the requirements for USB Protection are essentially the same as the base Business Agent requirements.

Installing and Uninstalling USB Protection

To add USB Protection to your devices, you need be subscribed to either Premium or Ultimate Business Security, as the Essential Business Security subscription doesn't offer this service.

To activate an additional subscription or upgrade to Premium or Ultimate Business Security, see Activating and Upgrading Subscriptions.

Once purchased, the subscription will show USB Protection available and the number of devices using the service. Clicking the count link (available once you add the service to one or more devices) will bring you to the Devices page, filtered to show devices with USB Protection enabled.

The USB Protection service will be available for new installations as part of the Business Agent deployment.

For more information on new installations, see Adding Devices to Business Hub.

Download the package and execute the installer as usual - the Agent will install alone, and then install USB Protection afterward.

Inside the Business Hub, the USB Protection service can be seen on the Devices page through selecting the USB Protection column.

Once added, the column will display the USB Protection icon and toggle.

Existing devices can add USB Protection post-installation using this toggle — click it so that it turns blue, then confirm the action by clicking Install in the pop-up dialog.

The service will be installed once the Agent syncs with the device.

On the client side, there will be no indications that USB Protection is installed, since the service uses the Business Agent to operate. However, when a device is blocked on an end device, the user will see a notification in the system tray. In this case, if the device should be allowed, they are indicated to contact the administrator, who can then configure the exclusions for USB Protection.

To uninstall USB Protection from a device, click the toggle so that it turns gray, then confirm the action by clicking Uninstall in the pop-up dialog.

You can also bulk change the USB Protection service to off/on via the Manage Services option.

For more information on how to manage services for devices, see Managing Services.

Configuring USB Protection Settings

To access and configure USB Protection settings:

1. Open the Policies page
2. Click the desired policy to open its Detail drawer
3. Click the Settings tab, then USB Protection
4. Expand the USB Protection section
5. Choose between allowing and blocking access to removable storage devices (access is allowed by default)
   • When blocking access, you can enable the checkbox to not apply the blocking to optical disc drives (a restart is required to be initialized).

Configuring Exclusions

You can configure exclusions for USB Protection via the USB Protection exclusions settings of a selected policy so that specified connected removable devices can be allowed for unlimited time. Whitelisted devices will not be affected by any global setting configured in the policy.

For detailed instructions, see Configuring USB Protection Exclusions.

Overriding Policy Settings

Via the Services tab of a device, you can override its policy configuration for USB Protection by ticking the Manually override policy settings checkbox and selecting the desired setting (allow or block).

To learn more about policy overrides, see Overriding Inherited Policy Settings.

USB Protection Report

The USB Protection report provides an overview of all removable storage device connections to devices in your network within a specified period of time.

To learn more, see USB Protection Report.

FAQ