AUSTRALIA COMPUTER THEFT TOPIC OF DISCUSSIONOh, no, where's my notebook? - TheEdge - smh.com.au
The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics estimates 3.4 per cent of notebooks are stolen each year. Victoria's figures are roughly similar. Australia-wide, those figures would represent a loss of more than $30 million.

Gilles Novel, managing director of Business Security Systems Australia, which provides asset protection and management services to companies that own about 50,000 notebooks, says the official figures don't reflect the actual incidence of theft, ``because people without insurance wouldn't bother making a report''.

Companies and educational institutions that frequently have $10,000 excesses on their insurance policies are generally forced to write off their notebook losses.

Companies such as Kensington - inventor of the security slot that is standard in the modern notebook - sell cables that allow owners to tether their portable computers. APC (American Power Conversion) and the bicycle lock manufacturer Kryptonite have recently released a range of even more secure locking devices that make theft more difficult.

There are, however, more effective measures such as covert tracking systems and identification plates, for example, the StopTrack service offered by Novel's company. Australian corporations report that these are helping reduce the incidence of theft.

The 2003 Australian Computer Crime and Security Survey, compiled by AusCERT, the Australian Federal Police and the police forces of Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, found only 53 per cent of companies suffered notebook theft, compared to 74 per cent of respondents in the 2002 survey.

Many of those thefts would have been committed internally - as many as 80 per cent, according to CLUSIF, a French crime research organisation. That rate is largely a result of the fact that many companies have little idea at any time where their notebooks are.

Telstra reduced thefts of its 16,000-notebook fleet to an industry low of 2.25 per cent after it installed software that tracked where the computers were last used. According to Business Security Systems, in the four years since Telstra began using the StopTrack service, it has reduced theft to 1.2 per cent.