> ...most company policies will try to block USB drives of any kind.
Grand assertion. Where's your supporting cite? To be clear before goalposts are moved, the context is external optical media drives---a peripheral commonly issued along side laptops without one---not USB mass storage devices.
> a peripheral commonly issued along side laptops without one
Wait, _is_ it? In this future year of 2023? I haven’t seen this as common practice for at least a decade.
(The sort of higher-security-stance companies who disable USB drive support will also generally disable support for external optical drives, because why take the risk?)