Intel's Anti-Theft Tech Comes To Asus P Series

Intel's Anti-Theft Tech Comes To Asus P Series

Wednesday, April 08, 2009 - by Shawn Oliver
Here lately, Asus has spent the bulk of its time pumping out all sorts of new GPUs. Today, however, it's going back to its roots -- and by that, we mean, back to the notebook arena. The outfit's P Series, which was just showcased at CeBIT in Germany last month, will soon be equipped with Intel's own Anti-Theft Technology in an effort to curb the growing theft of laptop computers. Not surprisingly, Asus is aiming this at businesses, business users and everyday consumers that tend to travel often.

The Anti-theft PC Protection Technology provides users with the ability to send a "poison pill" remotely, rendering the notebook inoperable by comprehensively shutting it down. If and when the machine is ever recovered, a local password or recovery token can be used to reactivate it. Of course, this "theft deterrent" actually offers no real deterrent; granted, it'll keep your data safe once stolen, but unless Asus plans on slapping huge "Anti-Theft" stickers on the lid, we're guessing that most thieves will yank first and think later.

At any rate, we reckon the inclusion of this here technology can't hurt matters, and it'll soon be incorporated into the P30 and P80 notebooks. There's no word on when the tech will spread to more Asus machines, but we wouldn't be surprised to see the partnership spread to even more lines soon.
Via: Asus | News Archive | Tags: Intel, Asus, P Series, Theft, Anti-Theft
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By kid007 on Apr 8, 2009

great i feel more secure that our federal official will spend our dollars in more safe computers so just in case they get lost my SSN would be protected!

God Bless Technology! after what 30 years

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By 3vi1 on Apr 9, 2009

At the very least, the person that steals one of these gets a harddrive they can re-format, free RAM, and a lot of replacement parts (screen, keyboard, cpu, touchpad...) that they can sell for several hundred dollars on eBay.

Someone who actually wants your data is not going to connect the machine to the Internet (or even boot the machine): They're going to pull the hard-drive and attach it to a machine that already has all of their cracking tools installed. The only thing that stops this is the use of full disk encryption - which you could install without paying the monthly fee theses OEMs are going to want.

And remember, people using FDE are just as likely as anyone else to have their data stolen once the OS is running.

The anti-theft tech will be disabled by default, and most users won't turn it on - either because they don't know it's there, or they don't want to pay the monthly fee, or for privacy reasons.

So, not a big game changer.

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By bob_on_the_cob on Apr 9, 2009

I think I have to agree. Encryption is the way to go. I dont have my laptop encrypted, but IDK who would want my email account and pictures. Steam is the only thing that has much value and I don't auto save my password so they would just know my account name. Which now that I think about it they could get the password sent to my email. Damn. I fail.

*Goes to encrypt laptop harddrive*

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By neo.teo on May 1, 2009

For companies and other professionals this might be great, but what about a regular person? I'd much rather like to get my laptop back, then preventing any thief from accessing the data.

You might want to use something like IP Sneak or Lo Jack for Laptops instead of buying a new computer :)

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