Ericsson, Intel to Develop Remote Laptop Kill-Switch

The two companies are working on a remote kill switch for laptops. Loaded with both HSPA and GPS, the laptop can be SMS disabled and globally located in the case it is stolen. A disabled laptop cannot be booted while third party software can handle aspects of extra data encryption as well.

Through this collaboration between Ericsson and Intel, a theft management service residing in the network can send a message via SMS to the mobile broadband module inside the notebook, which securely transfers the message to Intel's Anti-Theft function inside the processor platform, which takes appropriate actions, such as completely locking the computer, making it unusable. When the notebook is located and recovered, an unlock message can be sent to the notebook that makes the data accessible again.