New service attempts to reduce after-effects of laptop theft
Posted by Chris Leckness on 04/12/06 in Laptops
Many people don’t think too deep about the theft of a laptop, other than the fact that they just lost their new $1,500+ computer. The after-effects of laptop theft are much stiffer though, with the growing number of people who keep personal and/or financial information on their computers. If you use the laptop for business purposes, then the information could be even more sensitive and in-turn could hurt your company financially or harm the reputation of your company. Just ask the opinions of the major auditing firms who had laptops stolen in recent months that contained personally identifiable information on them.
According to an article from ComputerWorld, a new service from Everdream Corporation is targeted at reducing the potential ill after-effects of data that is stolen along with a laptop. Basically, if your laptop is equipped with this service and is stolen, you would first need to contact Everdream to make them aware of the theft. They would update this status in their theft recovery system, which would then be "looking" for your laptop to connect to the Internet. If the thief is dumb enough to hook it to an Internet connection, then it will inform Everdream’s system that it is online. At that point, the system will send commands to the laptop to either encrypt or delete certain files from the laptop that you have specified at an earlier time. There are similar services out there which track down a stolen laptop if it is connected to the Internet, but this is the first service that I’m aware of which actually lets you encrypt and/or delete files on the stolen machine. According to the article, Everdream’s service will run you about $6.00/month per laptop.
While it’s great to see companies continue to look for new ways to protect consumers and businesses from data theft, it’s still much better if the laptop’s user takes matters into their own hands. These type of theft prevention/recovery systems are reliable only if a laptop is connected to the Internet. If a person takes your laptop with the intent to steal personal or financial data, then more times than not they will be smart enough to not connect it to the Internet.
I would personally recommend that instead of using a service like this, you should always encrypt any files that could be potentially harmful to you or your business in the hands of a thief. If it is a business laptop that only accesses sensitive information while you’re at the office, then look at just keeping the files on a secure centralized server instead of storing a copy locally on your laptop. Also, there are software solutions out there which will automatically render sensitive data useless if ill-play is detected, such as too many invalid passwords entered in a row. However, if you do use a software that renders data useless in an event like this, then you should be sure to make daily backups of that data that you keep in a secure place.
With the growing number of people who keep tax information, credit reports, banking information, etc. on their laptops, even the average consumer needs to be aware of the hazards of data theft. There are plenty of simple solutions out there that can keep you safe. Everdream might be the perfect solution for your needs, but personally I will continue to rely on my own security implementations.
Written by Chris Leckness · Filed Under Laptops
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