Catch of the Day: Laptops that
take care of themselves
By
October 10,
2001
This year, both the U.S. FBI and the British Defense
Ministry revealed that their officers had lost, in total,
hundreds of laptop computers, many with sensitive data on
them.
Yet most laptop thefts are inside jobs, says the FBI
(presumably not the division that made the theft numbers
public). The machines are appropriated for the value of the
hardware, most likely to be sold or used as personal
machines.
I recently talked with Alexander Kesler, president of
zTrace Technology, which makes a program that hides in a
Windows laptop and sends, to a central service, data about
where it is (based on which IP addresses it is using).
That helps recover hardware. For those laptops that are
stolen for the value of the data on them (which can be
priceless), zTrace has software that hides and encrypts data
on a machine unless the user types in a password when the
machine boots (there's no prompt for it). Without the
password, the protected data simply doesn't appear. This
protection works even if the computer never connects to the
Internet.
ZTrace has competitors, but I believe the laptop security
business is still wide open -- at least the FBI numbers would
indicate so.
- Rafe
Needleman
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