Laptops and Netbooks are often stolen, not only because they are useful items that can be used or sold on but because they often contain sensitive personal data that can be illegally used for fraudulent or other undesirable purposes.
Losing your laptop or having it stolen can be an extremely traumatic experience, all your emails, notes, business documents, photos, music and such like gone forever not to mention the risk of someone using your personal details.
Well now Fujitsu, using technology from Willcom Inc, have come up with a solution that could make laptops and other small devices less attractive to thieves and will render your laptop absolutely useless if it does fall into unscrupulous hands.
The answer is an always on security chip or basically a kill pill which you can activate remotely to lock the hard drive or disable the computer completely so that it cannot even be turned on.
This security option will be available this autumn, only in Japan initially as their PHS Network is able to accept remote commands, something that the chip obviously needs to be able to work.
Ok so how does it actually work?
The security solution consists of a receiver on which the decryption codes are kept and an encrypted hard drive, and the hard drive cannot be accessed without the decryption codes. So as you go about your daily business you won’t be aware of anything at all but if you happen to lose your laptop or it gets stolen, you have the power in the palm of your hand.
All you have to do is send a command remotely, using your mobile for example, to the laptop to either lock it so that it can’t boot up or to delete the decryption key on the receiver which will render the laptop utterly useless to anyone.
The chip is always on even if the laptop is turned off so no problems there. Apparently it’s not a problem either if someone removes the battery from the laptop as soon as they have stolen it. Once the signal is on its way it will activate the command the moment the laptop is turned on again.
The only thing I want to know is what happens if you send a command to permanently disable the laptop and then you happen to get the laptop back again?
Mind you the chances of that happening are pretty slim so not worth worrying about and anyway, the risk is outweighed by the sheer advantage of having the power to murder your own laptop and everything on it should the need arise.
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Want to bet some gubamint hand wringer gets in on the act and demands that they have a backdoor so that g-men can undo the suicide pill? Either that, or anyone who buys laptops with this feature gets put on a secret watch list, as they probably have something to hide.