Portable protection for road warriors
August 23, 2010 by Steve HannafordPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, New Products, Security
With so much work being done now by telecommuters and laptop-toting road warriors, data security problems have become all the more complicated. There’s a real need for remote workers to log into their company’s data center without opening new opportunities for data loss and malicious attacks.
A U.S. vendor called Symbio Technologies has just released an updated product that is aimed at helping companies deal with that problem. The Symbiont Boot Stick is a USB flash drive with built-in security firmware that can be plugged into any remote computer. When the user logs in remotely, the firmware bypasses the remote computer’s operating system and hard disk drive, creating a virtual session that is run entirely from the Boot Stick itself.
The Boot Stick changes any remote computer into what Symbio calls a “stateless” terminal that carries no corporate data on its hard disk. The user boots the computer from the USB device and logs in with whatever authentication is required by the company, authentication that can be individualized with each Boot Stick. All data and applications reside at the server, and any data updates are made from the server.
So even if the remote computer is laden with malware and viruses, none of that comes in contact with the operating system that carries those problems. The computer is being used as a keyboard and a display only.
The Boot Stick is part of a set of Symbio products that can convert all personal computers, local and remote, into virtual terminals. The benefits, according to the company, are both ease-of-use (since it cuts down on the IT headaches of maintaining and constantly updating personal computers) and security (it cuts down on viruses, spyware and the danger of physical theft of data-laden portable devices).
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Tags: road warriors, Symbio Technologies, Symbiont Boot Stick, telecommuters, virtual terminal
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