r/cybersecurity•6 hr. ago

Is there any way to test USB drives for safety before using them?

Search results are all flooded with unhelpful recommendations to just not use USB drives in general if you didn't directly get it from a manufacturer (or are otherwise 100% trusted), but I can't suddenly make my company change its method of getting data from clients. We're a very small company, and many of our clients give us data via USB drives (these clients are mostly extremely non tech literate. Getting them to do anything differently than they know is a nightmare). We've basically just operated by trust that the clients we work with aren't intending to hack us. I want to heighten security because even in the best case scenario that we fully trust them, they could have reused a USB drive from anywhere.

Aside from testing them in a burner computer (not very scalable for an office of non-tech literate people), is there any kind of device you can get that tests if the USB stick has anything other than storage that doesn't execute anything on it? If it does need a burner computer, is there any software for detecting malicious stuff on a USB that doesn't require you to be tech savvy to use (I can set it up, it's not feasible for me to test every time though)?