14 DAY TRIAL // People often lose their laptops or forget them on taxi backseats, and there are at least as many acts of outright thievery that leave humans bereft of their possessions each year.
Seeking to reduce the frequency when such attempts are successful, Ekahau has launched a new tag for use with the RTLS Wi-Fi tag system.
Ekahau is a provider of Wi-Fi based tracking and professional Wi-Fi planning solutions, based in Reston, VA. It has offices in Saratoga (CA), Helsinki (Finland), Tokyo (Japan) and Hong Kong.
RTLS stands for Real-Time Location System and relies on special tags. The new one is called L4 Laptop tag and goes into a notebook's ExpressCard slot.
The Ekahau RTLS system can track and manage tags anywhere on a campus, so long as Wi-Fi coverage exists.
"While the prices of mobile computers are declining, the requirements are increasing for data protection via acts such as HIPAA and HITECH as well as internal corporate and other government policies," said Tuomo Rutanen, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing at Ekahau.
In a nutshell, the L4 Laptop tag works by arming a tamper alert switch, which detects if the tag is about to be removed.
The SoC inside the tag is also programmable, capable of taking into account a variety of settings inputted by the user.
The RTLS system receives an alert when the laptop/tablet is taken outside a designated area as well, or if it enters an area marked as unsecured. Owners can even program periodic reports, have the on-board motion sensor send alerts when the unit is moved, get readouts on laptop battery power, etc.
Finally, for convenience, all it takes to activate the L4 is striking a few keys after it is inserted. The internal battery recharges from the ExpressCard energy but, should the laptop stay unpowered for a longer time, a charge can last for several weeks.
"Our customers, especially in the healthcare and government sectors, have been asking for a product like this that is specifically designed for portable computers. The L4 provides an additional layer of physical protection in a form factor and design that is transparent to the end-user and worry-free for the system administrator" said Tuomo Rutanen.