Should I wipe or track a lost device?

People often ask this as if wiping is the safe option and tracking is a risk. It is more useful to ask what you are protecting. There are usually three things: the data on the device, the device itself, and the student.

For the data, a locked device is already out of reach of a casual finder, and Skie does not keep what the school cannot afford to lose on the device alone. Keep schoolwork in accounts and the loss of a tablet is a loss of hardware. For the device, tracking gives the best chance of recovery and produces evidence. A wiped device vanishes from sight once it is reset, and a device you cannot see is a device you will not get back.

For reset, the protections matter. A reset from Settings is blocked. If someone forces a reset from the recovery menu, Factory Reset Protection is on, so the wiped device asks for the Skie organisation's Google sign-in before it can be set up again, and only Skie holds it. A reset device is of no use to whoever took it. Skie does not promise this is impossible to get around, only that it is built so that taking the device gains very little.

Where would a wipe be right? Where sensitive material is stored only on the device. In that case remote erase would help, but it is not available yet, and the team is working on it. Until then, treat this as a reason to keep sensitive material off tablets.

Practical tip: write your wipe or track rule into your device policy. See remote erase status and stolen and reset.

• Lock and track is the default response
• Tracking gives evidence and a chance of recovery
• Reset protection makes a wiped device useless to a thief
• Keep sensitive data off devices