The Cautionary Tale of the Khaki Bandit...
"'The khaki bandit' posed as an office worker at several corporations and successfully stole over 130 laptops which he later sold on eBay.
The ease of theft from the corporate offices (including FedEx and Burger King) shows just how bad corporate security can be. In some cases, the career thief just walked into the office behind an employee with a security badge.
Two million laptops were stolen just in 2004, and of those 97 percent were never recovered. Ultimately it was the corporate headquarters of Outback Steakhouse who caught the thief with a bugged laptop that notified them when he re-connected it to the internet." (more) (more)
How the Khaki Bandit (and others) do it...
• Choose targets with care. He went to neighborhoods, cities or states where he was not recognized. He sought large corporate offices to blend in with their large staffs and to find lots of laptops. When possible, he scheduled multiple burglaries for a single building that housing more than one company.
• Know the victims. He observed his targets in advance and paid attention to how employees dressed, whether they needed magnetic passes to enter and move about the building, and what time most of them left for the day.
• Time the arrival. He entered a business on the heels of an employee who could hold open a security door. He often arrived at about 4 p.m., a busy time of day that let him blend with the staff and exploit a time period when receptionists and assistants left for the day, but beefed-up nighttime security measures had not kicked in. He acted like he belonged.
• Make the move. When the office emptied, he went looking for laptops room by room. He kept an eye out for magnetic access cards, too. He had an alibi in case he was confronted. When done, he put the laptops in his shoulder bags - he would carry one into the building with a second bag inside it - and go.
• Move the product. He drove or mailed laptops back to his temporary home. He prepared them for sale by erasing the prior owner's data and installing or updating critical software.
Even folks from the Outback bug their laptops.
You should, too.
Resources...
XTool Mobile Security, Inc. (tracking system)
Computrace (tracking system)
Lo-Jack for Laptops (tracking system)
LaptopLocate (tracking system)
Total Logic Security (marking system)
Ztrace Gold (tracking system)
