In a Kaspersky Lab's security team report on Absolute Computrace, a product developed by Austin, Texas-based Absolute Software which “allows organizations to persistently track and secure all of their endpoints within a single cloud-based console from Weds they identified that remote takeover of impacted systems was possible through a number of avenues.
This begs to say what about other pre-installed software, AV, Media control, backup and so on. Do you really trust that the software that you may or may not enable is secure and not vulnerable to compromise? What is the best alternative remove immediately? What about user preference and what they demand? When do you say this is just to dangerous? What if like Computrace the software is integrated into the bios and you cant remove it?
I'm looking for opinions, I have my own thoughts which include removing the things I can and trying to guard the things that I can't remove. Also I think its important that we as IT Professionals have to be aware of what our devices run without our knowledge and monitor access to our device communications.