A study sponsored by Dell found that over 12,000 laptops are lost or stolen in U.S. airports each week. The airports with the highest frequency? In order: LAX, then Miami, then JFK, then O’Hare, then Newark. Two-thirds of those are never recovered.
What to do? Well, Dell has come out with a suite of security services that might help: Dell ProSupport Mobility Services. The software allows for several nifty solutions for a missing laptop. There’s remote tracking and recovery, also called “Lojack” (the opposite of “hijack”, from a system developed for stolen cars). This “Lojack for Laptops” system has been around a while, introduced by a company called Absolute Software, but now Dell is putting muscle behind it by allowing you to get it preinstalled. Lose your laptop, call the service, and they’ll track down the address where the laptop is sitting (they use the laptop’s IP address and then get the physical address from the Internet service provider).
Perhaps even cooler, there’s a remote data delete service. Report the laptop missing, and they can wipe your drive clean, so sensitive data is protected.
Of course, there is a hitch. A big one. In order for the search or destroy commands to reach the laptop, the thief has to connect to the Internet. Finding a laptop connected via Wifi can be tough, but, worse, try recovering your laptop from Ulan Bator.