Analysis: Qualcomm's CEO should have known better

Computerworld - When I heard that Irwin Jacobs, the chief executive and founder of Qualcomm Inc., lost his laptop I thought, 'Wow, where's the football?'

You know, the "nuclear football," the suitcase with all the nuclear codes that's carried by a military aide who goes with the president whenever he leaves the White House.

Jacobs' IBM ThinkPad went missing at a journalism conference in Irvine, Calif., Sept. 16., and according to press reports, there was a bunch of sensitive, classified, hush-hush information as well as personal data contained on his laptop (see story). Of course, losing your laptop at a journalism conference is sort of like broadcasting the combination of your safe.

The level of security that Jacob had on his computer wasn't revealed, but the reports threw security gurus into paroxysms of rectitude in stating the various security methods they have to guard against the theft of company information on mobile devices. So let's take a look at some of them.

According to Boston-based Safeware Inc., an insurance company that specializes in insuring computers and technology equipment, more than 319,000 laptops were stolen last year. That's one about every two minutes.

First of all, if your laptop holds information that's for "your eyes only," there are passwords and encryption techniques that can keep your private information private.

Something as ubiquitous as Pretty Good Privacy might do the trick. Part of the McAfee 2000 suite, this popular software can encrypt e-mail and other files, among other things.

This concern for maintaining secrets is sometimes a good thing, but it can put you in a cloak-and-dagger mentality. If you just want to worry about the laptop itself, there are a number of services available that will track it for you.

One is Computrace, software produced by Absolute Software Corp. in Vancouver, British Columbia, that sends a signal to its monitoring center the moment the stolen computer is connected to a phone line.

Another is produced by Yellowtag.com Ltd. in Cheltenham, England, which sees the issue in terms of identification. According to Mike Daw, managing director at Yellowtag, around 70% of lost property is never returned to its owner, usually because it can't be identified. Yellowtag says it solves this problem by providing users with a unique and secure e-mail address that's linked to their servers and tells them where the missing machine is. The trouble is that the finder has to be honest enough to send an e-mail saying he found it.

When President Clinton, leader of the free world, travels to theDemocratic Convention in Los Angeles, or anywhere else, he has his entourage with him. A Clinton spokesman said, "This is the information age, and information travels with us," along with the security detail and the nuclear football.

Unfortunately, Jacobs, one of the leaders in wireless technology, didn't have anyone carrying his laptop for him, and he probably feels terrible about losing his machine. But one question: Did he put his name on it?

• To read Computerworld's complete coverage of this issue, head to our Focus on Security page.