The case of the missing laptop has gotten so familiar that security experts have coined names for the phenomenon: “notebook nabbing” and “lapjacking,” among others. By any name, it’s clearly one of the hottest trends in thievery. The boggling statistics come from the nation’s leading computer insurer, the Safeware agency in Columbus, Ohio, which reports that 208,000 laptops were stolen in 1995, up 39 percent from the year before. With sales of portables now accounting for roughly a quarter of the consumer computing market (up from about 15 percent in 1990), those numbers will only grow. Lightweight and anonymous, a laptop may be the easiest prey since a Rolex, and more lucrative. Safeware’s Charles Drake likens them to electronic gold, ready to go in a handy black tote bag.
You probably don’t need an alert from your insurer. just listen to the chat around the water cooler. At Bankers Trust in New York, security investigator Brian Charikofsky recounts how more than 100 of the bank’s thousand or so travel computers were stolen or “borrowed” over the last two years. Hotels catering to business travelers are also reputedly the happy hunting grounds of laptop snatchers. Stand up to greet a client in the lobby, and you might sit down to find your PC is gone. Muggers have been known to rip carrying cases off people’s shoulders on city streets; teams of thieves work major international airports such as New York’s JFK and Los Angeles International. A common ruse, the Federal Aviation Agency warned recently: you’ve just plunked your PC down on the airport-security conveyor belt when two people slip into the line ahead of you. One goes through quickly, the other makes a big show of setting off the metal detector. While you wait out the distraction, his partner nicks your PC and disappears into the crowd.
Most such thefts are for the computer itself. A $4,000 laptop of recent vintage can be sold to the unscrupulous or unquestioning over the Internet or on the street for as much as half its retail price. The value of the information lost can often be more than the PC itself. Imagine an author who loses his great American screenplay. Or a traveling salesman who loses his list o fwould-be clients. This spring, thieves broke into the California headquarters of NEC Technologies and stole six laptops containing confidential specs on the company’s upcoming product line, as well as its entire sales and marketing plan. NEC executives call it a serious blow; they doubt the machines were picked at random. Richard Heffernan, a Connecticut security expert, sees this as a “burgeoning problem” in industrial espionage, especially for executives traveling in Europe or Asia.
But manufacturers are beginning to catch on. New software makes it easier to lock hard drives and secure files, typically using passwords or even encryption. Absolute Software of Vancouver offers Computrace, which activates a computer’s modem from time to time, surreptitiously calling “home”-and alerting the owner to its location. Computer makers are more security-conscious, too. Panasonic, for one, equips its latest models with a removable hard drive, so you can leave the laptop behind.
Still, some users see paranoia as the better part of valor. One of Heffeman’s clients, a major defense contractor, has been burned so often it now posts guards in its executives’ hotel rooms. Now, that’s status. In your next contract negotiation, be sure to ask for that PC protector.
