It is our
hope that you are aware of how much of a risk spyware can pose to your
business. Your business generates, collects, and leverages truly considerable
amounts of data each day that is intended for your business only. While spyware
that is introduced by a hacker is clearly a bad thing, what if the manufacturer
of the device installed a program that pulled data from your machine?
Well, if you
have a desktop workstation or laptop that was produced by HP, there’s a good
chance that it is happening to you right now.
It appears
that a software, called HP Touchpoint Analytics, had been bundled in with a
Windows Update. This software is a part of the larger HP Touchpoint Manager and
sends HP an unknown cache of data from the device on a daily basis. According
to HP, this is to help relieve “time-consuming tasks of device support and
lifecycle management.”
While this
may sound like a beneficial service, it still doesn’t explain why HP doesn’t
ask for permission to install it.
If you would
rather not have a program like this on your business devices, sharing an
unknown data sample with HP, it is fortunately simple enough for IT to
uninstall. All they have to do is check the Windows Services interface for “HP
Touchpoint Analytics Client,” disable it, and uninstall it from your installed
programs list.
If your IT team needs assistance in adding this to their other responsibilities, Emerge is here to help. Give us a call at 859-746-1030 to learn more about how we can give your internal IT resources a helping hand.