>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>A friend asked me. I don't know the answer. He is not an IT; works for a large corporation. The corporation has a policy of not saving files from a cloud to a flash drive (for personal use). I am not asking here to judge about the company policy though. My question is strictly technical.
>>>
>>>He wants to save some files (for personal use) from a cloud to a flash drive. Of course, he does not want the company to be aware of it as it violates the company policy.
>>>
>>>Which method of copying the file from the cloud to a flash drive is less "detectable" by the company IT?
>>>1. Open the cloud drive and drop a file from the cloud to the flash drive
>>>2. Open the file from the cloud (which he does as part of his job) and Save As the file to the flash drive?
>>
>>Organizations can configure technologies such as Information Rights Management in Office 365 to discourage or prevent these sorts of activities.
>>I for one will not be further discussing this topic, for what should be obvious reasons.
>
>I get it.

He should check if there are other avenues where the files enter
the use area he targets/wants them in that are not forbidden.
In large orgs there is often a left hand / right hand difference.

If there is known policy not to copy files to flash he should not try to circumvent it -
at least not without ok from his direct supervisor.

Case in point - working on SourceSafe around 2001 was a mess inside a LAN,
nearly unusable when accessing from homeoffice via ISDN.
I was approved to work on source @home,
but was not allowed to link my own PC to their LAN
when working on-site or adding a USB device with special drivers
(W2K needed them).

So after reviewing their setup I found an easy way to circumvent their defenses
I went to my super and asked him if I was allowed to use this weakness -
which was simple logoff, decouple company machine RJ45 from LAN and
link with crosspatch to my laptop, boot into Knoppix,
bulk copy my backup rar of project and latest fixes.
Saved ***lots*** of time whenever I switched form on to offsite coding.

But unless circumvention is ok'ed, I think Al has the correct response.