Laptop LoJack: Recovering Stolen Devices and Protecting Data

Much like the famous LoJack for cars, LoJack for Laptops does nothing until needed; that is, when you report your laptop’s theft the company’s recovery experts start the recovery process.

Over 100 devices are lost or stolen every minute and more than 12,000 laptops disappear weekly from U.S. airports alone. According to the Computer Security Institute, corporations spend an estimated $5.4 billion annually with the average large company losing almost $3.9 million to laptop and mobile-device thefts, and another $4.5 million on the proprietary and confidential data stored in those machines.

LoJack® for Laptops was called CompuTrace until 2005-that’s when Absolute Software licensed the name LoJack from the vehicle recovery service.

LoJack for Laptops is a proprietary laptop theft recovery software that grants remote access to lock, delete sensitive files from, and locate the stolen laptop.

It also provides the additional services of an investigations and recovery team that partners with law enforcement agencies around the world to recover and return protected laptops to their owners.

How It Works

If your laptop is stolen or lost, you can log into your online account to remotely lock your device and delete sensitive files to avoid identity theft or corporate espionage. However, note that there is no option to retrieve, back up, or encrypt files from a stolen laptop.

Once Absolute receives a theft or lost report, the protected device will silently switch to theft mode and accelerate Monitoring Center communication the next time it connects to the internet. The service can be remotely commanded to phone home every 15 minutes, scan files, install additional 3rd-party vendor software such as a key logger, make screenshots, and geolocate the device via GPS data stream or WLAN triangulation.

The Investigations and Recovery team provides evidence to local law enforcement to recover the protected device (make sure you filed a police report) and pursue criminal charges.

Keeping You Safe

Absolute’s CompuTrace persistence module comes preinstalled as part of system BIOS/UEFI in some Lenovo, HP, Dell, Fujitsu, Panasonic, Toshiba, Acer, Dell, Samsung, and Asus machines.

It detects when the Lojack for Laptops software has been removed and ensures the software is automatically reinstalled, even if the hard drive is replaced or the firmware is flashed.

Apple on the other hand, only allows the software to be installed on the hard drive and not the BIOS, so if the hard drive is replaced or reformatted, the LoJack software will be lost.

On average, Absolute LoJack reports recovering out of 4 reported stolen devices and safely returns them to their owners in about 22 days.

You can check out their pricing plans here.