News Display

12/04/2009

NSW high-school students will be tracked using radio waves and will be disabled if stolen.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25323465-421,00.html

FREE laptops issued to NSW high-school students will be tracked using radio waves and will be disabled if stolen.

Chinese company Lenovo, which won the contract to provide more than 200,000 laptops for the State's students and teachers, says thieves will be wasting their time stealing the government-funded units.

It says each laptop will have built-in security features including hack-resistant technologies, remote disabling functions and radio-frequency identification tagging.

The computers will also have tracing software embedded in their hard drives that will allow authorities to pinpoint any lost or stolen devices.

Once a student reports their laptop stolen, authorities will have the option of locating and retrieving the device or triggering a full system delete to render it useless.

The cost of the security measures is contained in the overall price of the project.

Lenovo's contract with the NSW Education Department is worth $150 million.

Lenovo Australia managing director Phil Cameron said that although he could not guarantee laptops would not be stolen, he was confident brazen thieves would be outsmarted by the new anti-theft features. Mr Cameron told The Sunday Telegraph: "We believe that we are giving some of the best enterprise-grade security options back to NSW students.

"It's more than just one specific angle on security.

"We're looking at physical, software and hardware threats, along with the network-based threats as well.

"The main objective is to protect students from threats, either physical or electronic."

Sarah Redfern High School council president Glenna Niedermayer has previously expressed her concerns about students carrying flashy laptops in western Sydney.

Ms Niedermayer said the security measures sounded promising and she was cautiously optimistic about the scheme.

"It does comfort me, because it may deter people from nicking a computer and taking it to Cash Converters," she said.

"I hate to say it, but there are people who, in a desperate measure in desperate times, might try to sell their kid's laptop for a bit of cash. I'm just hoping Lenovo will do exactly what they say they are going to do, and that it does work out."

The laptops are part of the Rudd government's $1.9 billion digital education revolution, which aims to put computers in the hands of all students in years 9 to 12 by 2011.

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