...for FREE!
A security friend at [a very large] Corporation contacted me this week about laptop losses. His company experienced "a dramatic increase in the past year" - primarily when employees traveled on business.
He was studying the problem. Was this just street crime, or was his company being targeted for industrial espionage reasons?
I pointed him to pertinent Security Scrapbook articles. The trend is clear, but what about a simple solution?
Here it is (assuming you have already done encryption and employee awareness training)...
Researchers at the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego, have launched a new laptop tracking service, called Adeona that is free and private.
Here's how it works: A user downloads the free client software onto a laptop. That software then starts anonymously sending encrypted notes about the computer's whereabouts to servers on the Internet. If the laptop ever goes missing, the user downloads another program, enters a username and password, and then picks up this information from the servers, specifically a free storage service that has been around for several years, called OpenDHT.
The Mac version of Adeona even uses a freeware program called isightcapture to take a snapshot of whomever is using the computer. (more)
