Iron Mountain'sDataDefense
It turns out that Iron Mountain is a company based in Boston blazing a trail in the notebook security sector, not the dwarven stronghold of Dain Ironfoot in Tolkien's Middle Earth. No chance of mining any mithril for us then, but they do offer a new solution that encrypts data.
Imaginethis scenario: you're at a crowded coffeehouse doing work withyour Wi-Fi connection when you take a quick break to buy a muffin andanother super grande latte. You leave your table and your stuff,and wait in line at the counter in the front of the store. Whenyou return to your table, your laptop isgone, and against all reason, none of your neighbors supposedlysaw the theft taking place. You (and all your work files on yournotebook) are history, right?
Wrong. IronMountain just released a new laptop security service calledDataDefense, which would allow you to protect your files using anonline interface to your stolen notebook.Any time the thief tried to access the Internet with your liftedlaptop, DataDefense would shut down the operating system. Or, ifyou choose, you can have DataDefense agents delete every file onyour notebook, or at least lock them down.
The security service also protects with an "out of contact" rulethat kicks in at a designated amount of time that your computerhas been out of contact with the server. Additionally, you canset an incorrect password limit-when hackers try to access yourlaptop a certain amount of times with a bad password, DataDefenseautomatically deletes the data.
Sounds like more destruction than salvation, right? Wrong again.Iron Mountain backs up its client data on remote servers, so that laptop files can be retrieved no matter what privacy measures are takenin case of theft.
DataDefense security will cost you per seat, or per agent, at$12 per seat and up. You can buy into the service either as asubscription-based server hosted by Iron Mountain, or as alicensed software that your own IT department can run.
