GPS Tracking ROI

Can’t recall the exact movie at the moment but one of my all time favorite actors, Clint Eastwood had a line that stuck in mind mind for years … I believe it was one of his “Dirty Harry” series, but at any rate, Clint’s character is sound asleep and the phone rings, waking him.  Clint reaches out, lifts the handset and speaks into the mouthpiece in that wonderfully intimidating voice, “You’d be well advised to have a good reason for this phone call.”

Lately a lot of people have had to make calls in the middle of the night to their bosses, to their clients, to law enforcement agencies … all with the same subject … “My laptop was stolen and all the company secrets/client billing data/employee’s personal data information was on it.”

This article pointed up some pretty interesting facts to me.  I knew laptop loss and theft was a big problem but I really didn’t know the costs dimensions very well.  As much as $89,000 per machine stolen, millions of dollars per year according to the FBI.

Stop and think for a moment about what happens if a machine goes missing with say 18,000 employee records on board.  Just the paper, envelopes and certified mail postage alone to notify folks of the theft is going to run $70,000 or more.

Now everyone knows I’m a certified GPS “geek”, known to overstate my case at times.  Am I trying to tell you that GPS tracking for your laptop is going to prevent its theft?  No, even I’m not that much of an enthusiast, but do think very hard about installing theft recovery GPS as well as other standard laptop security options.  The faster you can recover the machine the less dollars it’s going to cost and the greater your return on investment (ROI).

This is one interesting service you can use; https://www.mylaptopgps.com/how.php

They say their technique is proprietary and from what I can tell it’s really not GPS at all, but some sophisticated techniques using various IP addresses to progressively pin down the machine.  But I really don’t care about the nitty-gritty of their technology, I care about the results.  You should to.

• It’s cheap.  $9.95 a month and less, depending upon the number of machines
• It’s effective.  The triple combination of shields is a smart way to escalate response.
• It focuses on the most important thing … the data on the computer, which is normally much more important than the value of the computer itself … even if the computer is not recovered, physically, you get your data back in your hands and out of the thief’s hands.  Slick.

I like this idea in a number of ways, I even think the company is perhaps limiting itself too tightly by marketing this only for laptops.  Desktops and servers go missing all the time to, and very few computers that get stolen don’t get used … the thief is either going to crank up the computer for his/her own use (and exploration for vulnerable data) or s/he’s going to sell it to someone else who will.  Either way, in today’s highly connected world, your data stands an excellent chance of recovery.

“Any organization that fails to take the threat of laptop theft seriously is playing chicken with its stakeholders’ data security,” said security expert Siciliano. “Smart companies leave sensitive data off laptop computers and track their machines with GPS.”

Dave says, you better look into this now, before your machine goes missing, even if the technique isn’t really GPS.  Someone will look back at this message a few months from now and say, “Damn, he was right.”  You’d be well advised not to be that someone.