Intel announced today at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai an upcoming technology that will help address the issue of laptop theft. This is a major concern for companies with a mobile workforce. By nature the portability of laptops make them ideal targets for theft. News headlines of laptops containing sensitive information such as Social Security numbers and confidential company information being compromised from stolen laptops have become common. IT departments have been scrambling to lock down their company laptops and portable devices.
While current disk encryption technology allow you to encrypt the contents of a hard drive, Intel plans to further address the issue by rendering the entire laptop unusable should it fall into the wrong hands. Called Anti-Theft Technology (ATT) it appears it will render both the processor and the storage devices inaccessible.
A number of third-parties including notebook manufactures have announced their involvement. This should help ensure industry wide availability of this new technology.
Intel Mobility Group chief Dadi Perlmutter told Register Hardware that the new Anti-Theft Technology could be available by the fourth quarter of this year. Intel has also hinted that they are looking at integrating tracking technology in the future.
This new technology could possibly be part of the Centrino 2 – Montevina platform to be released this year. This new capability will be added to Intel’s Active Management Technology which is part of the Centrino vPro IT management package. The system allows corporate IT managers to manage PC fleets remotely, fixing their software problems, monitoring security threats and booting computers up.