'Back-Door' Base Closures
Biden Talks Loss With Fallen Troops' Families
Neely Out at GSA
More USPS Buyouts
Gimme My Discount! Deals for Feds
Buyout Watch: Who's Offering What
Sensing laptop theft
- By Joshua Dean
- September 1, 2001
- Comments
aving a laptop stolen is the nightmare of federal travelers and off-site workers. Now, Caveo Technology LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., hardware developer, has created an anti-theft system that senses when a laptop is being stolen.
Caveo Anti-Theft is a standard PC card, a small piece of hardware with a motion sensor at its core that is inserted into notebook computers. Anti-Theft can be programmed to emit a sound as loud as a jackhammer or a recorded warning in the user's voice when a laptop is picked up.
A thief stealing a laptop equipped with the system is in for a nasty surprise. Users can set a perimeter from 3 to 30 feet and, if a thief carries the purloined computer farther, Anti-Theft renders it inoperable. "We nearly turn the laptop into a brick," says W. David Lee, CEO and founder of Caveo. A laptop owner can recover data from a returned laptop by entering a 16-digit alphanumeric password into the computer. Passwords this long are hard to crack.
Laptop owners can arm and disarm the system by using a personal identification number. Caveo also has invented a motion-based password-a certain pattern of movements that will activate and deactivate the system. Caveo expects Anti-Theft to be available in early 2002 for less than $100 each.
By using this service you agree not to post material that is obscene, harassing, defamatory, or otherwise objectionable. Although GovExec.com does not monitor comments posted to this site (and has no obligation to), it reserves the right to delete, edit, or move any material that it deems to be in violation of this rule.
