A Secure Thin Client Environment

Security in a computing environment is about protecting your physical and virtual assets. Loss prevention of valuable data related to personnel, production and performance, or proprietary technologies should be a priority. Perhaps you are concerned about destruction of company computing equipment by malicious code. The uncertainty of your situation can be a grave matter.

No one can offer a silver bullet. Your best defense is an understanding of the overall threat. Adding measures to limit access by unauthorized users is fundamental to protecting your computing environments. Guarding against the most obvious weaknesses, like a weak password, is the first step. Limiting the points of entry into your systems is crucial to securing your computing environment. The more complex your systems are, the greater the number of barriers you must set up.

ACP believes in Terminal Services and thin clients. We believe it is the most efficient and supportable computing environment available today, as well as one of the most secure computing environments obtainable. The real beauty of Terminal Services and thin clients is that, while its architecture is simple and manageable, it is still robust and natively supports almost every Windows application as if it were running in a full workstation environment.

Its inherent security comes from the separation of the user and client from the computing platform. If done right, the client devices actually protect the centralized computing environment. Additionally, setting up and securing one terminal server can support secure computing for as many as 30 or 40 terminals and users.

ThinManager Ready client devices benefit from the proprietary nature of their operating software. The client firmware itself is impervious to attack by worms or viruses. ACP's unique remote boot technology means the client doesn't even retain the firmware local to the device. If the firmware was actually compromised a clean image could be had by simply rebooting the client.

ACP wanted more security for thin clients at the user level; so we added a second level of security for users and clients, TermSecure™. Now any ThinManager administrator can lock down individual thin clients or terminal server application groups, restricting user access before they even reach a Windows login. We also added support for combined authentication modes using a physical device like a USB Key Fob or Prox Card in combination with a password. By restricting access to the client devices in your working environments, you're actually adding a layer of protection for your server systems.

A Secure Thin Client Environment

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