A recent virus alert at the Pentagon has caused the use of portable USB sticks to be banned after they were in part blamed for the propagation of viruses, it has been found.

The virus is said to have infected a large number of computers in the US' Department of Defence but steps had been taken to mitigate the problems, according to Pentagon sources.

Speaking to vnunet.com, sales manager for northern Europe at SanDisk Jason Holloway said that the productivity and efficiency of the departments within the organisation may be affected by the outright ban, which could restrict the movement and accessing of data.

He continued: "USB drives are productivity enhancing, but the risk of malware infection must be stopped with layers of security, such as hardware-based USB encryption and password protection, and virus scanning on the drive itself."

The Department of Defence's main goal is to provide military forces in a bid to deter war and protect the US, using DefenseLINK technology on its networks to support this effort.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent).