You may not have paid too much attention to security labels on your technological equipment before, but although apparently humble, there are quite a lot of applications to something so small and simple. There’s more than one good reason for many businesses to use them so extensively.
Asset labels, as they are so called, are used not only to track the location of expensive hardware, but can also be used to protect equipment against tampering. By the application of a simple, durable label, there’s a lot of hassle to be prevented.
What’s in a label?
Probably the most expensive equipment you own will be your IT equipment – computers, monitors and laptops. Companies often use asset labels to keep track of this valuable equipment, with a simple barcode scan offering up information regarding its most recent user, service contracts, and status of warranty. It’s also good for making auditing much easier.
For your own personal equipment, it is important to keep track of this kind of thing too – especially if you use it at work.
Keeping track of sensitive data is essential – this is just one of the reasons asset labels are applied to IT equipment. When something like that goes missing, it’s absolutely essential to track it down as soon as possible.
More than just a humble label, some asset labels can be more hi-tech than you would think.
Voiding
To protect the warranty of equipment, a void label is essential. Tamper-proofing is absolutely essential when protecting hardware, and void labels are used commonly by large companies when discovering liability for any broken equipment.
Void labels are often a little more sturdy that standard asset labels. Quite simply, and attempt to lift or remove the label will reveal clearly the word ‘VOID’, and leave no doubt regarding whether something has been tampered with.
These labels are usually constructed to withstand high temperatures and are UV stable – that’s a lot in a little label.
Stuart Jailler from Seareach comments: “With the amount of information able to be accessed and held on current day devices, knowledge that there has been a physical breach of security should form a critical part of a businesses’ IT plan”
The technology of a VOID label is a specialist, two-stage adhesive. Thus the revealing of the VOID label upon a tampering attempt.
Big technology, tiny space
The barcodes of asset labels can be easily scanned for information, as aforementioned. A newer innovation is temperature-sensitive barcodes, which are set to offer an even higher level of security.
This is something that is actually intended for the food and medical industry rather than the business sector. After being scanned – usually, by a smartphone or some such device – spoiling of food or medicine can be identified instantly.
A chemical reaction within the label itself hides certain lines of the barcode in the event of high temperature. With a quick scan, it’s clear whether or not a certain product has been potentially spoiled during the packaging process.
Now, it’s clear to see that an asset label is more than just a label.
