On 14 November 2012 10:04, Tony Whitmore <t...@tonywhitmore.co.uk> wrote:

> I quite agree Michael, but at the moment encryption is not what they are
> looking to do.
>

Ah... I see, corporates have made a decision about a solution, and are now
looking for a problem it fits :-)

What is their use-case scenario?

 - Michael loses his Ubuntu laptop in a house burglary, which has company
confidential information on it.

 - Michael calls the helpdesk and they send out a "wipe" command.

 - Ronnie (the burglar) turns on Michael's laptop at home, and is presented
with an Ubuntu login screen. Scratching his head, he gives the machine to
Reggie (his techie mate), who installs a hooky "MS Windows X" onto the
machine, wiping everything that was on there...

Are they relying at some point on Ronnie or Reggie plugging the machine
into their home ethernet to receive the "wipe" signal? What if Reggie goes
one step further, and slaves your hard drive in his desktop? - no "wipe"
signal will be received now, and he can browse your data at his heart's
content.

The "remote wipe" stuff works well for machines that have their own network
connections (3G phones and tablets), but for a desktop or laptop, it's not
that likely to be of much use. If the machine auto-logs in, so that Ronnie
or Reggie can at least use it (and maybe be tempted to hook it up to their
network at this point), it would work, but why would you set up your
machines to auto-login if you're worried about your data in the first
place?! :-)

Probably not the best security if security is the primary concern...
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