Personal Security and Identity Theft Expert: GPS Tracking Makes Laptop Security Easy

With the new year only in its second week, news outlets have already reported laptop computer thefts of possibly far-reaching implications. Robert Siciliano, a widely televised and quoted personal security and identity theft expert, repeated his mantra: Affordable, simple-to-obtain security solutions such as GPS tracking make laptop theft an easy situation to deal with.

Siciliano, president of IDTheftSecurity.com, leads Fortune 500 companies and their clients in workshops that explore consumer education solutions for data security issues. The Privacy Learning Institute has featured Siciliano, a longtime speaker on identity theft. Author of "The Safety Minute: 01," Siciliano has discussed identity theft and data security on CNBC, on NBC's "Today Show," FOX News, and elsewhere.

"Last year was one rich with data security breaches of all kinds," said Siciliano. "The last thing businesses want to hear is that the data breaches—especially those involving laptop thefts—that so defined 2006 are continuing unabated. And yet this is exactly what we're learning. Luckily, smart organizations will recognize that simple measures to equip their laptops with GPS tracking and other security tools will minimize the associated risks."

Last year saw laptop thefts of daunting proportions dominating much of the news on data security breaches. For a list of laptop thefts in 2006 stretching back to May, visit the following link at Siciliano's Web site: "Laptop Thefts in 2006." January, meanwhile, has been witness to breaches that suggest nothing has changed:

• According to reports, Notre Dame University employees received a legally-required letter on Jan. 2 to inform them that a University Director's laptop computer storing their Social Security numbers and other identifying information had been stolen.

• Also on Jan. 2, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that burglars had stolen two computers, one of them a laptop, from Electronic Registry Systems, a provider of cancer registry data processing services. One of the computers stored Social Security numbers and other sensitive information regarding clients' patients. The crime prompted Emory University to warn 38,000 patients at its teaching hospitals that their identities were at risk, and Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania to do likewise for 25,000 patients.

Symantec has found that a laptop computer is stolen every 53 seconds, and that 97 percent of these machines lost to theft are never recovered. Research from Gartner Group has shown that the cost of laptop computer theft can exceed $6,000 for even just one machine. Siciliano stressed that the solution lies with services from MyLaptopGPS (www.MyLaptopGPS.com), a firm that has developed enhanced security through GPS tracking that works in concert with encryption and other technologies.

Internet-based GPS, the technology MyLaptopGPS uses, is more affordable and user-friendly than other types of GPS tracking and effectively tracks lost machines. And MyLaptopGPS™ not only tracks lost laptops, but also installs software that encrypts and silently removes and retrieves files from the machines—at once returning the data to its rightful owner and deleting it on the stolen computer. Users can invoke MyLaptopGPS's functions remotely.

"Laptops and other mobile computing devices are so susceptible to criminal activity," said Dan Yost, chief technology officer at MyLaptopGPS. "The only effective way to ensure their recovery, not to mention the security of your data, following theft is to equip them with GPS tracking technology and data-protecting technologies such as ours."