USB Device Protecting Laptops Against Physical Theft and Tamper

Cicada Security Technology Inc. was founded in January 2010 and is based in the Montreal area of Quebec, Canada. It addresses a gap most security stacks leave open: the physical theft or tampering of an endpoint, where disk encryption and data loss prevention tools have nothing to act on because the attacker already holds the machine. Its customers include federal civil agencies, Department of Defense organizations, and Intelligence Community elements, and the product is also sold commercially.

The product is a discreet USB device with its own management processor, so it operates independently of the state of the host operating system. Once armed, it continuously monitors trigger points on the workstation for signs of theft or tampering. When a trigger fires, it invokes policy-based protective actions in real time: interrupting access to system resources, local data, and connected cloud services, sounding an audible alarm, and optionally raising SMS or email alerts through the company's monitoring service.

Product variants have covered physical data protection for laptops, tablets, and mobile devices, remote data purge for eliminating data on a lost machine, and a USB isolator that blocks compromise arriving through the port itself. Cicada achieved interoperability with McAfee, which lets the physical trigger drive an existing data loss prevention environment rather than requiring a separate console. The company describes itself as the only commercially available technology that actively responds to computer theft or tamper.