14 DAY TRIAL // Lenovo's ThinkPad T400 series notebooks will become the first laptops to use the new Intel anti-theft technology coming under the name of Intel Anti-Theft PC Protection. The technology is implemented by Intel into the chipset and will work with Lenovo ThinkPads that use the newer Intel Centrino 2 platform and Intel vPro technology. The Anti-Theft PC Protection comes with other features as well, including a way to deliver a so-called poison pill to a laptop that has been reported stolen.
Lenovo plans including the new anti-theft technology from Intel on its ThinkPad notebooks to offer a range of security features to protect data in case a laptop is stolen or lost. The new technology will be offered on Lenovo's ThinkPad T400 laptops starting December. The Anti-Theft PC Protection, Intel Centrino 2 platform and vPro technology chip bundle is meant to ease managing and securing a fleet of PCs for the IT department in an enterprise.
Lenovo becomes the first PC vendor to use Intel's anti-theft offering on its machine, although it was unveiled in April. Last week, Lenovo announced another security feature for its ThinkPad laptops, the SMS (Short Message Service) text message that would allow users to disable a notebook which was stolen or lost.
As mentioned above, the Intel anti-theft technology is built into the chipset itself. Regarding the Lenovo laptops, the technology will work with Absolute Software's Computrace tracking and anti-theft software, included in the laptop's firmware. Thus, an IT department would be able to track the location of a notebook at any given time. The Intel technology and Computrace would allow IT departments to set policies for laptop security, like setting a ThinkPad to shut down in case it is disconnected from a central server for a long time or if it detects a certain number of log-in failures.
“Security has been something that has been talked about, but we have not seen the rubber hit the road,” said Richard Shim, an analyst at IDC. “Now, we are starting to see these new technologies come out that enable security features such as restricting access to a notebook if it has been lost or stolen, encryption to prevent access to this information or in some cases just destroying the data on the system.”