Dell's notebook security fails to impress

Dell's adoption of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on all its Latitude C610 Notebooks has received a mixed reception from the channel.

Reaction to the initiative ranged from the dismissive: "an old idea dressed as a new publicity stunt"; to the enthusiastic: "a major opportunity for selling security solutions".

With Home Office sponsorship and RFID technology from Marconi Infochain, Dell has piloted a scheme to provide its client BT with laptops embedded with chips containing unique owner-information.

Should any of the chipped notebooks go missing, BT could trace the stolen property with scanning devices that verify the original owner.

"I am delighted that Dell has joined this unique project to defeat crime," was the official statement from Home Office crime reduction minister John Denham.

A statement issued by Dell said: "The system saves customers the time and expense normally incurred when dealing with the channel, which requires the system to be built twice, boxed twice and shipped twice."

The final sentence seemed to offend the channel on several levels.

There is nothing new in the technology, countered Andy Nabbs, mobile computing security specialist at Ultima Business Solutions.

"This has been around for two years," he said. "The one difference between this and, say, car tracking, is that there's no system in place to track PCs when they go missing."

David Lynas, director of global services for Qinetiq (formally the government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency) said that the technology on its own had no value anyway.

"You can't buy off-the-shelf security," he explained. "Vendors who have wanted to push products like this have contributed to the feeling of betrayal among customers. Besides, the data is usually more valuable than the laptop, and Dell isn't protecting that."

Security architect Ofir Arkin added: "Being able to track users, through their laptops, introduces a security issue of its own. Will other people be able to track those users?"

But Warren Faulkner, the Dell account director who originally supplied BT, was unrepentant. "We've never had a channel and corporates could be volume buyers of this system," he said.