Posted 12:10 am Friday, December 26, 2008
TISD Using Anti-Theft Software To Nab Laptop Thieves
By MEGAN MIDDLETON
Staff Writer
Staff Writer
Thieves. be gone.
That is the message that TISD officials want to send to any five-fingered bandits interested in swiping one of the district's 1,500 laptops purchased for teachers and other school personnel this year.
That is the message that TISD officials want to send to any five-fingered bandits interested in swiping one of the district's 1,500 laptops purchased for teachers and other school personnel this year.
In March, the school board, approved the purchase of more than 1,000 Dell Latitude 530 laptops at a cost of about $2.06 million. In April, the district began delivering the new computers to teachers. TISD also has purchased laptops for principals and other administrators.
The price tag for the purchase included the cost of an Microsoft Office 2007 license, a three-year warranty with accident protection as well as installation and removal of the existing teachers' computers, according to district information.
Also included was a three-year "Computrace LoJack" anti-theft software subscription to allow law enforcement to recover a stolen laptop.
The laptop purchase "was a fairly large expense, and our taxpayers are footing the bill for this equipment. We wanted to make sure we were doing everything we could to make sure we were protecting this investment," John Orbaugh, director of technology for TISD, said of the protections put in place for the district's laptops.
Orbaugh said at some point every year, whether it's a desktop or laptop computer, "We have a building broken into and something stolen."
"We knew taking these out into the public would open us up to more possibilities of that happening because suddenly the machines aren't locked into a school building anymore," he said.
"Again, we didn't want to put the asset at risk and our teachers in a position where they were uncomfortable using this technology. The whole purpose behind it is to help our teachers be more effective and help our students."
Orbaugh said, "We wanted the teachers to take advantage of this device. We wanted them to be comfortable taking it home, working on their lesson plans from home or whatever they needed to do with the machine."
Out of about 1,500 TISD laptops, six have been stolen from TISD, officials said in earlier this month.
Some have been stolen from vehicles, where the thief broke a window to get the equipment, and some have been stolen from portable buildings at schools.
But through the anti-theft system from Computrace, which can trace a stolen computer's location, TISD has either recovered the stolen equipment or been reimbursed.
Orbaugh said the nice thing about the Computrace system is "it's guaranteed."
If, after 90 days, it cannot recover the computer, then Computrace pays TISD $1,000. The amount goes down each year as the machine ages and depreciates, Orbaugh said.
The district has had one laptop recovered and the others that were stolen have been paid off, Orbaugh said.
But even when the machines are paid off, the company continues hunting them -- and will return the equipment to the district.
The one recovered laptop was located in Tyler. But the person in possession of it who was contacted by police at the traced location said the computer was purchased from somebody at a trade days in East Texas, Orbaugh said.
"It was in perfect working order and (we) put it back into production," he said of the recovered laptop. "The system works really well. It's invisible to the users. The communication happens in the background."
He also noted that a person can't delete the program.
"It's embedded into the processor of the computer," Orbaugh said. "There's no way to uninstall this. You can blank out the entire hard drive, and the program will still recover itself and still report itself back to Computrace."
TISD Police Chief Rex Brown said the Tyler ISD Police Department handles the case if the computer is stolen from school property. But, the company, "basically does all the work for us," he said of Computrace.
"It's a wonderful thing," he said. "If you're looking at 1,500 computers within an entity -- whether it's school or a private business, if you've got that many laptop computers, then it's a service that's worth the cost because it will help you recover your property."
His message to would-be thieves, Brown said, is "we're going to track it down."
And Orbaugh said his message to any potential laptop bandits is, "look somewhere else."
"They need to be looking somewhere else because we will find them. ... There's nothing you can do to stop it," he said.
Orbaugh said the software makes TISD laptops unattractive to potential thieves.
"There's easier places they might want to go look if they want to steal something than stealing a TISD computer," he said. "It will be traced. It will be found. It will be recovered."
Orbaugh said he believes the system has "proven its worth."
"We've just been very pleased with how it's worked. I think it has also accomplished that feeling that we wanted to engender with our teachers that it's safe for them to use this equipment, take advantage of it, and not be afraid," he said.
It's also been a good business decision, Orbaugh said.
"As a district, we're pretty sensitive to the community's need to trust that the dollars we use from them are well-taken care of," he said. "This was part of that care we wanted to provide them. They need to have confidence that their money's being wisely spent."
