A Jagged Little Pill for Stolen Laptops
Basic Tools For Protecting Missing Devices with Device Management

There are three primary ways you can use Device Management to reduce risks posed by lost or stolen laptops.

• Tracking Beacon: Being able to locate a lost or stolen device can be crucial to reducing the risks to your confidential information. The Device Management client communicates with the server over HTTP/S whenever an Internet connection is made and at scheduled polling intervals thereafter. Device Management logs the date, time, IP address and gateway of each connection—invaluable information for potentially recovering the device.
• Encrypting Data: Every data security strategy should include data encryption. Device Management includes support for the Microsoft Encrypted File System (EFS), allowing you to encrypt individual files as well as entire disks and folder structures. The solution is even able to destroy the EFS certificates on remote systems, rendering encrypted files completely unusable. Device Management also includes support for other third-party encryption tools.
• Deleting Data: Destroying data that resides on a remote system can be of the utmost importance. Device Management's packaging flexibility gives organizations the power to be as creative as they want in destroying data. Administrators can easily upload files to the Device Management server for backup and then delete files and folders from remote systems. You can even seek and destroy certain types of files—rendering operating system disks unbootable and completely deleting other disks.

Basic Strategies for Putting Device Management to Work

There are two basic strategies for using Device Management to protect lost and stolen laptops: the "Destroyer" and the "Time Bomb" packages.

• The "Destroyer": Device Management enables administrators to deploy targeted "destroyer" packages to specific devices that have been reported as lost or stolen. Because the client operates directly over the Internet—even if no user is logged in to the computer—the moment that a missing laptop touches the Internet, the "destroyer" package is delivered and executed. Within minutes of booting up, the "destroyer" can encrypt or delete files, copy files back to the server, repartition or reformat the disk, or perform any other commands to incapacitate the stolen device.
• The "Time Bomb": Another precaution IT administrators can take to limit risks posed by lost or stolen mobile systems is using Device Management to place a "time bomb" package on those devices when the client is first installed. Similar to the "destroyer," the "time bomb" can include a variety of encryption and deletion commands. The advantage is that "time bomb" packages are pre-loaded onto the device in a time-release format that isn't reliant on having any type of network connectivity back to the Device Management server. The administrator determines the amount of time and the steps taken to disarm the missing machine.

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Stolen Laptops In the News

November 2006:	Starbucks Corp. reported four laptops, two of which contained the names and Social Security numbers of about 60,000 U.S. employees, missing from its corporate headquarters.
August 2006:	Hospital Corporation of America reported the theft of ten computers containing thousands of files listing patients who had treatment at hospitals managed by the company in eight states.
July 2006:	Hotels.com warned nearly a quarter of a million customers that they may have had their credit card numbers stolen, following the theft of an unencrypted laptop belonging to the travel Web site's auditor, Ernst & Young Global Ltd.
June 2006:	Two laptops used by U.S. Navy recruiters in New Jersey went missing since early June, potentially exposing personal data on about 31,000 recruiters and prospective recruits.
May 2006:	A thief steals a laptop from an American Red Cross office containing personal information from thousands of blood donors-including social security numbers and medical information.
May 2006:	A laptop PC containing the confidential records of 26.5 million veterans and their spouses is stolen from the home of a Veteran Affairs Department employee.
January 2006:	The theft of a company laptop belonging to Ameriprise Financial exposes the sensitive data of about 230,000 customers and advisers.