BOSTON – Iron Mountain Inc. is outfitting its transport vehicles with a new chain-of-custody technology designed to ward off human fallibility that can lead to the misplacement or outright theft of data, according to Computerworld. As part of a $15 million investment over the past 18 months, Iron Mountain is in the midst of rolling out a patent-pending vehicle security system across its North American fleet of trucks.

Called InControl, the new transportation platform technology and associated services has been embedded in more than 1,150 vehicles to date. The rollout will continue through 2008.

Iron Mountain has already retrofitted its Data Protection business fleet, which serves most of the Boston-based company’s computer backup tape storage customers. Efforts to embed InControl in Iron Mountain’s records management and shredding vehicles is currently under way. The service is also now being rolled out in Europe, starting first in the United Kingdom.

Offering RFID, authentication, and real-time tracking capabilities, InControl is expected to help prevent the disappearance of critical data tapes or the removal of tapes from the trucks during transit.

The InControl’s vehicle alarm system features:

• Driver proximity controls allowing InControl to use radio-frequency-enabled keys to establish an alarm system that prevents drivers from mistakenly walking away from a vehicle that has not been properly secured or alarmed.
  

• A dual-key ignition immobilizer that requires two keys to be inserted at once to start the vehicle. One of the keys is designed to prevent any breaches or errors in the vehicle cargo area by locking and activating the cargo alarming system prior to vehicle ignition.
  

• An in-motion security detection system to prevent information loss while a vehicle is in motion. An operator warning alarm will be instantly triggered if any cargo area locking or security system is improperly opened or fails once a vehicle is moving.
  

• Wireless scanning technology that allows InControl to validate pickup and delivery transactions in real-time and send that information back to a processing station for auditing and tracking purposes, while also identifying any abnormalities that may show up.