HP Set to Launch Laptop Lo-jack

Beginning in the UK, Hewlett Packard will launch a service to help recover stolen notebook computers. For those computers tracked and presumed irretrievable, there is an erasure feature also available, to make certain that sensitive materials don’t become public knowledge.  Said to work like lo-jack for automobiles, it should lower the cost of insuring these items against theft.

from Tech Connect

Hewlett-Packard has opened the doors to its all-new tracking and recovery service for the mobile computing market which empowers businesses with the ability to locate lost or stolen units, and if need be, remotely destroy sensitive data.

HP are launching this service in the United Kingdom, based on a Computrace technology from Absolute Software. The idea is that the software uses an agent installed on each machine that is designed to report its location to an online monitoring centre whenever it connects to a wide area network.

It is a simple but effective idea - if a laptop protected by the Tracking and Recovery service is stolen, the customer can log in to a web-based Customer Centre to report the theft and file police report details. A recovery team then works with law enforcement to track and recover the system.

The most important part about this system is that additionally, customers can trigger a wipe command that will be carried out the next time the laptop connects to the internet. A log file can be viewed at the Customer Centre web site, confirming that all sensitive data has been deleted.

The Computrace agent is difficult to remove, according to HP, and incorporates self-healing technology that rebuilds the installation if a thief tries to remove it from the system.

“Critical business data and passwords that fall into the wrong hands as a result of computer loss or theft can spell disaster for organisations, but our new Tracking and Recovery Service offers total peace of mind should such an eventuality occur,” said Shaun Hobbs, UK category manager for PC clients at HP.

As well as offering an installation service for existing HP/Compaq notebooks, HP Tracking and Recovery is available pre-installed on selected HP commercial laptops, and customers need only to register to activate the service - where annual subscription fees start at £24 per system per year.

Though this is a nice feature, I can’t help but wonder if serious thieves would not remove the hard drive first, and use data analysis techniques, rather than trying to boot the machine on its own. No word on what that technique might yield, but this will foil the casual thief on a daily basis.

The service is certainly economical, if you have thoughts that theft might occur, and the data is not already secured by some other technique (encryption?).

Also, no word was apparent on what the cost would be for a retrofit of non-equipped models, but is certainly should be small, otherwise a new model purchase might be the choice of the interested user. The US HP site has a page concerned with business user protection, but again, no pricing. The extent of these services offered makes one wonder what cost this could add to the total notebook price – it certainly doesn’t look like it is inexpensive on this side of the pond.

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