The challenge
The Danish Chamber of Commerce, like many large organizations, faced a growing challenge: managing an increasingly mobile and diverse fleet of IT devices. Employees were using more laptops and remote workstations than ever, and that meant more devices slipping off the radar — unencrypted, unpatched, misplaced, or even stolen.
Tools such as SCCM and Intune helped maintain some control, but they had clear limitations. If a device hadn’t connected in 90 days, was factory reset, reinstalled with a new OS, or modified its Microsoft Autopilot profile, it could easily disappear from inventory. This created blind spots not only in IT asset management, but also in compliance — especially under GDPR. According to IT Operations Manager Kim Sørensen, “Licenses expire, security policies can break, and employees forget everything about GDPR and store personally sensitive information on their laptops.”
Even advanced encryption and patch management tools couldn’t guarantee protection. “A survey of over a million endpoints revealed that 13% of encryption tools and 19% of client patch agents were non-functional,” Sørensen noted. The Danish Chamber of Commerce needed a better way to monitor compliance — and reduce the risk of data loss or regulatory breaches.
The solution
To regain control, the Chamber deployed Echo, NetCloud’s BIOS-embedded device management and monitoring solution. Unlike software-based endpoint tools, Echo lives permanently on the device's motherboard and continues to function regardless of operating system reinstalls, hard drive replacements, or factory resets.
With Echo’s real-time data, IT teams can verify critical controls like BitLocker, track device health and patch status, and identify discrepancies between SCCM reports and actual device conditions. “We even discovered a misconfiguration in our SCCM setup because Echo reported a problem, while SCCM said everything was fine.” Echo’s value also extends into incident recovery. When a theft incident occurred, Echo provided exact location tracking—even after the laptops had been reinstalled and sold abroad. “Every time a new owner tried to boot up ‘their’ laptop, we reformatted it. We watched on the map as people returned the stolen devices to the original thief in frustration,” Sørensen recalled.
The results
With Echo, the Danish Chamber of Commerce has transformed its device oversight and dramatically improved its compliance posture:
Full Asset Visibility: Echo revealed that the organization had significantly more devices than expected — a common issue. “A customer thought they had 12,500 devices. Echo showed 16,000,” noted Frank Meinertz, Key Account Manager at NetCloud.
Automated Lockdown: Devices that haven’t connected in 90 days are automatically locked, a safeguard that ensures lost or idle devices don’t become a liability. “Some users aren't thrilled when their laptops lock after six months in a drawer, but from a security perspective, it’s a great — if merciless — policy,” said Sørensen.
Enhanced Security Assurance: Echo ensures that every device meets encryption and compliance standards, reducing the need for lengthy audits and lowering GDPR-related risk. “If something gets stolen or goes missing, we can prove BitLocker was active, and we avoid costly data breaches.”
Incident Recovery and Deterrence: Echo enables organizations to actively participate in recovery efforts. In one case, a thief returned stolen laptops after seeing a custom lock screen message indicating the devices were stolen property. “We even got two laptops back from a kind man in Baghdad.”
“IT departments cannot do any better than the system lets them, and we have been very satisfied with Echo from NetCloud. It offers us a fantastic overview of what OS versions are running on different units”
— Kim Sørensen, IT Operations Manager, Danish Chamber of Commerce
Ready to take control of your IT assets?
If you’d like to regain control over your hardware assets and secure your entire device fleet — even those currently out of reach — reach out to the NetCloud team today via info@netcloud.dk