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 NEWSAntitheft technology emerges By James Evans August 11, 2000 3:33 pm PT A CAR ALARM blared, glass shattered, and a laptop full of information was gone.
That day, Hariprasad found out about the university's annual business-plan competition through the Wharton School of Business. He got to work, typing away on a proposal to develop CyberTrak Systems, a company focused on combating laptop theft. Hariprasad won the first round of the competition in the information-technology category and at the end of this month, he and Ghanta will take the hypothetical CyberTrak plan to market. "There's car security," said Hariprasad, 24, CEO of CyberTrak. "There's home security. But really nothing has been done with computer security... . There has never been an elegant, easy-to-use solution." The less-than-year-old Boston-based company's answer is CyberTrak SecurePC. The CyberTrak software can be downloaded from the company's Web site in about a second, and it allows a stolen computer to be tracked when it is connected to an Internet connection, either via a corporate network or a phone. A theft victim can call a toll-free number or send e-mail or a fax to CyberTrak reporting the laptop stolen, activating the company's system to track the computer. The stolen computer will hold a file embedded in the hard drive. Once connected to the Internet, the stolen computer will be able to provide information to CyberTrak's Recovery Center on computer's IP address and ISP address. It also possesses an instant call-back feature that will notify CyberTrak of the phone number where the computer is being used. In turn, that will provide information on who logged on and the phone number where the log-on occurred. The information can be gathered within about 15 minutes and police are notified via fax of the computer's location. "It's stealthy," said Ghanta, 25, CTO of company. "It's hard to find. It's easy to use. It installs in a snap and it works." CyberTrak SecurePC also is virtually resistant to being dumped from a computer when someone clears a hard drive, Hariprasad said. The program, which is being beta tested at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Yale University, will be upgraded in its second version due at the end of 2000, he said. That version will provide a compressed data-retrieval option, allowing a user to decide whether data is retrieved, encrypted, or deleted, so that a user still has some measure of control over data after a computer with CyberTrak is stolen. Hariprasad said CyberTrak SecurePC will be marketed heavily toward a market he and his partner know: students and academics. He said the company already has a commitment from the University of Pennsylvania to make CyberTrak SecurePC a recommendation for all students to have on their computers. Talks also are ongoing with 20 other academic institutions, Hariprasad said. Pricing for CyberTrak SecurePC is still under discussion and will not be released until just before the Aug. 31 launch date, Hariprasad said. More than 319,000 laptops were stolen during 1999, according to Safeware statistics, Hariprasad said. And just this week, the State Department offered $25,000 for a missing laptop holding sensitive government information. "It will be a mainstream product that will be a no-brainer," Hariprasad said of CyberTrak's SecurePC. James Evans is a Boston correspondent for the IDG News Service, an InfoWorld affiliate.  RELATED SUBJECTS  SecuritySPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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