Camden Council boosts mobile security

The London Borough of Camden has implemented Computrace, a security solution from endpoint security and management firm Absolute Software that enables remote tracking and data deletion for its mobile devices.

Ian Lawrence, technical services programme manager for the council, explained at yesterday's IDC IT Security Conference that before the implementation he had identified three key ways of ensuring secure mobile device management.

The council serves more than 230,000 residents, and Lawrence serves 5,500 IT users, managing 6,000 devices. The risks of leaking data and falling foul of the Information Commissioner's Office were high.

"We have sensitive data on children and vulnerable people. I needed to minimise the risk of leaking our citizens' data," he said.

Computrace allows the council to track laptops and IP addresses, and enables a theft recovery service where the location information is passed to law enforcement.

It also includes Geofencing technology, which tracks a device's location by triangulating its position using location data accessed once it connects to the internet.

The council is also able to set location-specific permissions, meaning a set of laptops used in a school is mapped to those school grounds.

If one of them leaves its defined area, it alerts Lawrence's office. They can then track its movements, notify the police and remotely wipe its data. And this remote wiping facility is sophisticated enough to leave certain data untouched, if necessary. The implementation was completed in June.

---