We are a secondary school with many portable assets such as laptops,
digital cameras, and PDAs. In an effort to deter theft and enable
recovery of stolen items, we are considering using satellite GPS
technology to track our portable assets. Who (what companies) provide
such a sevice to educational institutions to track portable assets
such as those listed above?

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 17 Aug 2004 09:26 PDT

I doubt GPS is the way to go on this, but you might want to consider
some of the options listed at this site:

http://www.computersecurity.com/

See, especially, the listings under Laptop Security.

Let me know what sorts of additional information you need, after
looking over the above page.

pafalafa-ga

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Clarification of Question by ckendall-ga on 19 Aug 2004 06:04 PDT

Thanks pafalafa-ga, I appreciate that link. I also found
www.absolute.com and their product, computrace. We have so many
portable assets beyond laptops, I was hoping that being able to cover
items such as digital cameras, PDAs, and data projectors (items that
don't have a software installation component to enable internet-based
tracking) - and that it would be available and be cost effective.
Perhaps at this point our best option is to secure the laptops with
software and continue with barcode checkin/checkout with peripherals.
We have too many doors to cover and extended hours of building use to
consider using RFID tags. Any other ideas would be appreciated.

There is another set of resources that can be found at
www.pc-security.com.  One of the things they have is theft-deterrent
asset tags that are tied to a recovery registry.  This can be used for
all assets.