Fujitsu has been leading the charge on a new generation of secure devices, as that is becoming more and more a concern — not just for companies, but for individuals, who now store sensitive data on their laptops more than ever before.

The new security setup, co-developed with Willcom, will consist of a special receiver and an encrypted hard drive (Fujitsu loves those). The decryption codes will be kept on the receiver chip, and the hard drive can’t be accessed without them. So under normal operation everything is… well, normal. But let’s say you get your bag nicked at a coffee shop — that’s when the magic happens.

The chip is always on whether the laptop is, and is always connected (as long as there’s coverage) to Willcom’s PHS network. You can tell it to do one of two things: lock the PC so it can’t boot, or delete the decryption key, rendering the hard drive totally unreadable. I’m hoping there’s some way to back up the encryption key to another computer or something, in case you get the laptop back.

[via Tom's Hardware]