CALIFORNIA COMPUTER SOFTWARE TRACKS STOLEN COMPUTERSInside Bay Area - Business NewsSoftware tracks, protects sensitive electronic data
By Francine Brevetti, BUSINESS WRITER

KAREN ROSENBERG was really glad her superior knew his stuff. The information technology manager at California State University, Hayward protected his department's hardware assets by signing upfor Computrace, which is the product of Absolute Software (www.absolute.com).

Rosenberg, who manages application systems in the IT department at the university, now Cal State East Bay, remembers she had never heard of the product at the time. But when her laptop went missing in 2001, that very product, in conjunction with the Stockton Police Department where Computrace had a monitoring center, recovered her laptop.

Computrace is one of a number of software companies that protects laptops from theft by monitoring their location when unauthorized persons seek to use them.

According to a survey of 269 respondents by the Computer Security Institute and the FBI, the value of laptops stolen in 2004 topped $6.7 million. With this amount of value at stake, it's understandable that "track and recover" services such as Computrace are in more demand. Think LoJack for laptops.

"The technology is embedded in the laptop," said Ben Haidri, Absolute Software vice president of marketing and business development. "It calls our monitoring center daily when the machine is reported stolen. It reports every 15minutes the location of the IP address, the Windows login information and the e-mail address."

When the laptop is remotely located, Computrace finds the Internet service provider and works with the local police department to subpoena the ISP to submit the physical address where the laptop is located.

Vancouver, British Columbia-based Absolute Software employs several ex-police officers to help expedite the work of filling out warrants and to interact with police departments, Haidri said.

Haidri said the market is moving "from theft recovery to data and network recovery."

His company is now offering its customers the ability to delete their data remotely once they know their laptops have been purloined.

Haidri predicted that by the end of this year or early next year, Computrace also will offer the ability to transfer data remotely from the compromised machine before the customer destroys it.

That would be a significant event in the field, IDC analyst David Linsalata said. He said that his BlackBerry, which can store data, lets the user wipe data out remotely if the device is misplaced.

While Cal State's Rosenberg stood to lose only her e-mail, Michael Booth, a Santa Rosa manager for supplemental insurance company Aflac, was looking at the loss of customer information and
proprietary software when his company's laptop took a walk, thanks to the sticky fingers of an intruder in his office.

Aflac has 50,000 agents across the country, he said, and he recollects it was about five years ago that the company's IT department configured all the machines with Cyber Angel Security Software (www.thecyberangel.com).

"I realized, why file a police report when I have Cyber Angel?" Booth said.

It took several weeks to recover the laptop, but when he did, Booth was relieved to see that his customer information and Aflac's proprietary software were still intact, although the operating system had been destroyed. Bradley Lide, president of Cyber Angel, explains that when the legitimate customer signs on with an authenticated password, he or she is directed to an encrypted area hidden from the violator.

"The thief cannot see that he is in an encrypted area. When he tries to log in, the software looks for connectivity and it communicates with our monitoring center. We locate the computer this way until law enforcement can knock on the door. In 2004, we recovered 117 computers. We have an 85 percent recovery rate," Lide said.

Analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies said the problem with the embedded software business model is that "the computer has to be on for it to work."

Said Lide: "But (the tag and registry system) solution depends on a good Samaritan" — that is, someone who finds the device and reports it to the number or address on the tag.

Other "track and recover" services include Stealth Signal (www.stealthsignal.com, in English, Spanish and Portuguese), SyNet Electronics (www.synet.biz) and PC PhoneHome (www.PCphonehome.com).

These companies serve mostly corporate clients seeking to protect the many laptops of their mobile work forces, but they also serve individuals.

Generally, they charge individuals yearly subscription fees between $50 and $60 a year. PC PhoneHome's price is $30 for the life of the computer.

Of course, if you don't want to recapture your data and merely want to restore the value of the hardware, you can merely insure the machine through Safeware (www.Safeware.com), a computer insurance agency. Safeware will protect your PDA, smart phone and tablet PC as well.