FRSGlobal keeps track of its laptops

FRSGlobal is the only global provider of risk and regulatory compliance reporting solutions for over 30 countries. The company has over 300 staff spread across 14 countries, and supplies financial organisations with a multi-country risk and regulatory reporting platform. FRSGlobal is used in more than 1300 financial organisations around the world, including 41 of the top 50 global banking institutions.

Each employee within FRSGlobal has at least one Dell laptop and the company has 400 in total. These computers are used on a day-to-day basis by employees.

FRSGlobal’s operations are literally GLOBAL. Consultants from its Centre of Regulatory Excellence travel around the globe to service clients whilst other employees work from home or from remote office locations. This means it is essential for FRSGlobal to be able to account for each mobile device and to have a means of tracking the laptops wherever they are in the world.

Thierry Boone, IT Systems Engineer at FRSGlobal was determined to find a solution that would enable the IT division to keep track of all the devices regardless of where employees were working from, and handle loss and/or theft efficiently.

Ideally, should one of the company’s laptops go missing, FRSGlobal wanted to able to quickly authorise a remote deletion of files saved to it and retrieve the laptop(s) as quickly as possible. Computrace®One™ was recommended as the ideal solution.

“We first heard about ComputraceOne from Dell,” said Boone. “Deploying the software on to the laptops was very easy and it seemed to do exactly what we needed it to.”

The ComputraceOne software is pre-installed and embedded in the BIOS of a range of laptops from manufacturers including Dell, HP, Lenovo, Panasonic and Toshiba. Once a ComputraceOne protected laptop is stolen and the thief logs on to the Internet, ComputraceOne reports the location of the laptop to the Absolute Theft Recovery Team and the central administrator then provides the necessary information for local law enforcement to recover the device.

As it is embedded in the BIOS of the laptop, ComputraceOne is impossible to destroy and survives operating system re-installations, hard drive reformats and even hard-drive replacements. Employing this self-healing technology, the agent rebuilds itself, even if it is deleted, and ComputraceOne can only be removed by an authorised user with the correct password.

ComputraceOne is also able to remotely delete any data saved on the laptop that may be misused. This functionality was recently used by FRSGlobal when it experienced a theft. Absolute Software tracked the stolen equipment and located it in London and Tunisia! Rather than waste time retrieving the laptops, FRSGlobal instructed Absolute to delete all the data from the devices, which was executed immediately so no data became vulnerable.

“When we first discovered ComputraceOne two years ago, I assumed it would act as an insurance policy should any of our laptops go missing.” explained Boone. “However, it has proved itself to be even more valuable, and is now considered an essential business operations tool. The software enables us to keep track of all the company laptops, no matter which country they are used in.”

“I was amazed that Absolute Software was able to track the laptops and it is hugely reassuring to know that if our laptops are lost or stolen, we can immediately delete the information on them. Getting the laptop back (which is what we had originally wanted to achieve) actually became less important.” concluded Boone.