Question: A law firm I've been in contact with has recently been broken into 3 times in the past 4 months. In spite of a number of laptops and other equipment containing sensitive information being stolen, the tech support company occasionally doing work for them has done nothing to safeguard against future theft. I proposed installing anti-theft software (such as Prey) and later considered establishing one system as an information-gathering honeypot with hidden keyloggers sending information to a number of email addresses. 

All physical security best practices aside, what other measures could possibly be implemented here? These are all Windows systems. I don't doubt the separate incidents are linked and being carried out by connected if not the same criminals. 

The firm has already been in contact with the local authorities. However due to a lack of documentation on the stolen items, there are no serial numbers or additional helpful information on the missing devices besides make and model, so recovery seems a dead end but at the least they're aware of the incidents.

Answer: 
Apart from using tracking software and full disk encryption, the company may invest in educating the concerned people to use their laptops only to connect to virtual private servers ([VPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_server)) where they must save their data. That way, if a laptop of a given worker is stolen, no data could be found within it (I take in account the fact you stated good safety practices are known). A similar goal can be achieved if they can invest to buy their own -physical- servers.
Firstly encrypt the hard disks to protect the information on the laptops.

You need to make it easier for the police to find the people and easier for put them in jail.

There are modifications to the bios of laptops that make then ping an IP address whenever they connect to a network. You can then look at the source address on the pocket and get a court order for the given ISP to tell you where the laptop is. www.absolute.com is one company that sells such a system that allows an device to be remotely disabled as well as tracked.

I would also think about having alarm that activate a [smart water spray](http://www.smartwater.com/forensic-spray) when it goes off, that way it is easy to prove that someone was in the building at the time the alarm went off.

> 
> Upon activation the SmartWater Forensic Spray System sprays intruders
>  with an invisible liquid, marking their skin and clothing. The liquid
>  can only be seen under UV light, remaining on skin for weeks and
>  indefinitely on clothing. It can be used to link a criminal to a
>  particular crime scene, remaining detectable long after the crime has
>  been committed.
> 
> 
> 

I would be incline to do the above without putting up any warning notices with as few people knowing about it as possible. *It is better to put people in jail, then just get them to rob the next office instead of yours.*