1. An article of manufacture comprising: computer readable storage medium; a plurality of programming instructions stored in the storage medium, the programming instructions configured to configure a manageability engine of a processor based device and to provide a host theft-deterrence agent to the processor based device, to deter theft of the processor based device, the manageability engine and the host theft-deterrence agent being configured to cooperate with each other and a theft-deterrence server, remotely disposed from the client device, to implement a theft-deterrence protocol, the host theft-deterrence agent being configured to operate in a processor operated application execution environment of the processor based device, and the manageability engine being configured to operate outside the application execution environment.