Laptop Security Using GPS Tracking

By Greg Bartlett

More and more companies rely on computers and laptops for their business. They are not only useful for keeping and transferring information but also vital ways to keep in touch with salesmen and operatives who are out on calls and may not be available any other way. Many of these computers carry sensitive information about customers and product designs and prices etc. Information, in fact, which could be very lucrative for any competitors.

GPS tracking technology is now so advanced that it not only provides geolocational information but also shows the status of the laptop, i.e. whether it is being used. The mainframe computers at a central control can use information from satellite transmitters which are orbiting in space, but subsidiary receivers and transmitters can receive and transmit information to these mainframes without sending signals out to space. It’s not necessarily free gps tracking, but the small price to track can pay off in a short time.

A major engineering company was having problems with its products. As soon as a new range was launched, or sometimes even before, their rival competitors were producing the same or similar items with the same types of names and details. It was as if all the hard work and sleepless nights were done by the engineering company, only for someone else to come up with goods effortlessly beating them to it every time. They were losing thousands in lost productivity and man hours. They needed a real solution – and fast!

Although they were not suspicious of their salesmen and workers, they had GPS security systems installed into their new laptops. This was more to track the working hours than as a matter of espionage. To their huge surprise, one of their most trusted workers was showing strange behaviour patterns. He was recording time spent working and visiting customers, but his laptop showed that he was actually in the pub. Then, his third laptop went missing in as many months. Was he the culprit?

With this new technology, it is possible to not only track the whereabouts of the laptop, but to also disable sensitive information it contains. Sensitive files can be wiped clean. This will withstand operating system reinstalls, systems wipes and re-formatting of the hard drive because it is not software driven. Of course, if someone goes to the trouble of doing all that, then they have lost the potentially damaging information on the laptop anyway! The laptop was immediately remotely wiped. Not very surprisingly the new drawings which were on the laptop could not be copied by the rival company!

Tags: lost, security, system, tracking