Dell Latitude 10 Adds Enhanced Security With Fingerprint, SmartCard Reader

By Alexandra Burlacu | Feb 26, 2013 11:07 AM EST

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Security is highly important nowadays, and Dell takes security to a whole new level with its new Latitude 10 tablet with enhanced security features.

Dell announced a new version of its Latitude 10 Windows 8 tablet, with a built-in fingerprint reader and SmartCard reader — the very first for any Windows 8 tablet currently available on the market.

The Dell Latitude 10 Enhanced Security is designed for healthcare, financial services, government agencies and other fields in great need of serious security features. The Latitude 10 Enhanced Security also offers safeguards for enterprise customers.

"Other tablets being deployed in business environments can cause more harm than good in the long run with unforeseen management costs and unsecure data protection and access," Neil Hand, Dell's vice president of tablets and performance PCs, end user computing, explains in the press release. "With Latitude 10 enhanced security configuration, our customers will be able to give their workers the mobility and productivity they want while having the peace of mind they can easily enforce and adhere to some of the most rigorous security regulations."

"In our testing and analysis we found substantial advantages in managing the Dell Latitude 10 over an Apple iPad in an enterprise SCCM environment," adds Principled Technologies co-founder Bill Catchings. "Our analysts found that these advantages would translate to significant cost savings, especially when managing large numbers of these devices."

Since Dell added a fingerprint and SmartCard reader, the back of the Dell Latitude 10 Enhanced Security is now a bit bumpier than the regular version, but it doesn't affect the overall aesthetic. The bump is an eighth of an inch at most.

The slate further sports a Gorilla Glass display and a magnesium alloy frame. Despite its added sturdiness, however, the enhanced tablet doesn't seem any heavier than the original Dell Latitude 10. Dell also kept the same soft-touch coating which allows for a nice, easy grip.

Like the original, the Dell Latitude 10 Enhanced Security version packs a dual-core 1.5GHz Intel Atom Z2760 processor coupled with 2GB of RAM, and comes in either 32GB or 64GB storage configurations. Users can swap out the slate's battery for a four-cell battery, which reportedly boosts the Latitude 10's runtime to nearly 18 hours.

Additional security features include Full Drive Encryption from Bitlocker, Computrace, TPM 1.2, as well as Dell Data Protection. According to Dell, the new security features in this version of the Latitude 10 make it compliant with the Health Insurance and Portability Act (HIPAA), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS).

The extra security features, however, do come with a price to match. The Dell Latitude 10 Enhanced Security version costs $779; that's $200 more than the 64GB essentials version of the original Latitude 10 without the fingerprint and SmartCard reader.