Techotic

British company Virtuity has developed and patented some interesting software to help protect owners of vulnerable laptops from theft, or even just being moved a few feet.This new software, named BackStopp is designed primarily for government and corporate use, the company came up with the idea after a series of well-publicized thefts of government-owned laptops, which had illegally been taken home by government workers and were subsequently stolen either from their cars, or homes.

The UK government admitted that in the last year alone, just from the Ministry of Defence, an astounding sixty nine portable, and even more shockingly, seven regular computers had been stolen, many of these computers contained highly classified material.

This new software has three defenses against such theft or unauthorized movement of laptops. Firstly, each computer is given its own location which may be an entire government building, or even an individual desk, if the computer is moved out of the zone it will contact a control centre to alert them that it has been moved and to give its position.

Secondly, it will start taking photographs of his surroundings and the person that has removed the computer, the third thing it will do is dump specific sensitive files, rendering them useless.

Virtuity says that BackStopp will do all this without the thief knowing or being able to stop the three security actions. Obviously interest from government and big business in this software is very great indeed as a protection against serious espionage threats.

The Company will also release a domestic version of the software, which works in a similar way, the main difference being, if the owner strays out of the zone that they have chosen, the computer will lock itself and may only be opened with a server-based password.