Lojack for Laptops and Formating the drive

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Loki008

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I figure this is the place for this since it is a secutiry question, mods feel free to move it if this belongs somewhere else

I am looking into the lojack for laptops program to protect some of the laptops we use at work and i am woundering how the program could survive a harddrive format and OS reinstall and still be able to regularly contact the server to report its localtion. i can understand a hidden partition but once the OS is blown away and the new OS loaded i would assume that its service status would be lost and the program would have to be manually restarted. kind of like how OEM systems have recovery partitions, but those are not run automatically and have to be manually booted off of. I am looking to possably use this product on several laptops but because they are on a domain i would assume if one got stolen the theif would fail at logging in due to the ctrl-alt-del to log in requirment and not having an obvious user list / guest account. so they would just reformat the machine and install a new os, in which that case the machine would never access the internet before the OS was wiped clean.

any further insight would be greatly appreciated.
 
If you use the software route, setting the HD to boot first, followed by floppy/optical drives (or disabling booting from them altogether) and password protecting the BIOS would foil most attempts to wipe the drive.

There is a lojack type setup that you can install into the BIOS of most laptops, I haven't seen it in action, but I hear it works well and would be very tough to defeat. If I remember it low level drivers over the ethernet card to broadcast info and thus only needs to be powered on and physically connected to a network with internet access.
 
http://www.lojackforlaptops.com/

thats what i am looking at, they say their program surivies most formats and OS installs. i just am alittle uneasy at trusting a security program that i dont understand how it works. and the FAQ isnt very helpful. if i truely works then ill recomend we get it in a heartbeat, but their site didnt really go into detail how it works, which i understand them wanting to protect their technology. as for disableing the boot and such, honestly if the laptop gets stolen the first thing i want done is a format and OS install important data is stored on the network, however i would rather the theif not have access to mail and possably VPN, we have had a few laptops stolen in the past, and although recovery would be nice, its more of a nucience than a real problem. we mostly would use this product out of satisfaction that the person who stole the laptop gets arrested, less for the actuall laptop recovery
 
WS6 said:
this guarantee?
Click to expand...

thats the same company that makes the lojack for laptops, their guarantee only covers if the software communicates with their server at least once with in the first week of it being lost, otherwise they dont cover it. thats why i am iffy, if the laptop is formated and the comptuer never makes contact, they dont cover it
 
i'm a bit sceptical of those software solutions, but i suppose thieves are caught all the time because they are stupid.
 
Hmm, looks like smart laptop thieves would just pull the HD immediately and pop in a good one.
 
I've used them for about 4 years. Its standard part of our deployment. Lucky for us, we haven't had any of them stolen, however it does phone home pretty regularly.

Have a talk with a rep from Absolute. We just include this software as part of our lease.
 
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