A new online computer-tracking system is helping to deter computer theft at Western Cape schools.

The Khanya Project of the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) launched the project with a service provider, ITcrimes, 15 months ago.

Essentially, the service provider keeps a database of all computers and computer parts installed at participating schools.

Police can immediately identify the owner of the computer or computer parts online by typing in relevant serial numbers of equipment suspected to have been stolen.

“To date, 387 schools in the Western Cape are registered on the database,” said Ingrid Graham, responsible for public/private partnerships at Khanya. “This equates to about 8 000 computers.”

“Since the project was launched some 15 months ago, six incidents of computer theft were reported in the registered schools. Four have been resolved and two are under investigation.

“Over the December holiday period, zero computer theft incidents occurred at registered schools. Two incidents occurred at schools not registered on the database,” she said.

“Interestingly these were in the Overberg and Malmesbury, areas not considered high risk. It is Khanya’s aim to have all schools registered on the database shortly.”

Thieves previously targeted between 10% and 12% of computer laboratories installed by Khanya, despite strong security.

“The thieves are not always successful,” said André Pietersen, ICT Implementation Coordinator at Khanya. “However, some do get past various security systems to steal valuable computer equipment used by schools to support teaching and learning.”

Software used by the computer-tracking system automatically scans all systems to record serial numbers of every computer and every part in every computer in the school.

The data is fed to a centralised database and is provided to the police and second-hand shops, who can then use the data to check whether any computer or parts of computers were previously stolen.

Mr Pietersen said it was important to record serial numbers of both computers and parts because thieves usually broke up computers in IT “chop shops” to sell the components.

The system sends the data to the central database automatically via the internet. Schools can also back up the data onto a flash disk. Khanya encourages schools to use both systems, in case internet connections go down at any point.