The management of the educational institution decided to upgrade the IT infrastructure of their classrooms. One of the requirements was to ensure cybersecurity, with the use of modern approaches to organizing workplaces. That’s why the decision was made to use our solution — Kaspersky Thin Client.
Background
The history of the college dates back to 1941, when Moscow Vocational School No. 6 was evacuated to Orenburg. On August 24, 1966, an order was signed to open a statistical technical school of the Central Statistical Service of the RSFSR on the basis of the vocational school. Today, the Orenburg College of Economics and Informatics is one of the leading secondary vocational education institutions in the region.
The management of the Orenburg College had the following requirements for the solution to modernize classroom workplaces:
competitive price of equipment and software;
long service life of devices;
ensuring information security of the digital infrastructure;
minimal administration costs for workplaces;
flexible and convenient centralized management system;
high proportion of Russian components
Key issues
When creating or upgrading classroom IT infrastructure, several issues usually come into play. One is the limited budget that educational institutions have to spend on equipment and administration. Another is that classroom computers are often misused by students, and the removable media they bring with them become a source of malware infections.
Solution
A special feature of the solution is Cyber Immunity. This is the “innate” security of an IT system, the ability to withstand cyberattacks without any additional security tools.
Kaspersky offered its comprehensive Kaspersky Thin Client solution for building a managed and functional thin client infrastructure based on the KasperskyOS microkernel operating system.
The virtualization system was created using products from the companies Basis and Termidesk. The classroom virtual workstations run on Russian Linuxbased operating systems. There is also the possibility of direct terminal access to Windows and Linux computers.
Advantages of using Cyber Immune thin clients in educational institutions:
students can only connect to the required services;
ability to quickly deploy a learning environment for student lab practice;
ability to limit the use of removable media;
long lifespan of thin clients compared to desktops and laptops.
Results and feedback
Based on the results of the pilot project, the management at Orenburg College of Economics and Informatics equipped a computer science classroom with Kaspersky Thin Clients.
The introduction of Kaspersky Thin Client had a positive economic impact by reducing administration time, eliminating the need for antivirus protection tools, and reducing the likelihood of workstation failure.
Thin clients have brought added convenience for teachers. The time required to prepare the training environment for the next class has been reduced significantly. And if endpoints experience problems, they can simply be rebooted.
Students now have a reliable learning platform with a user-friendly and intuitive interface. In the future, Kaspersky plans to equip other classrooms at the Orenburg College of Economics and Informatics with Cyber Immune thin clients, as well as provide them to other educational institutions in the region.
It was important for us to create learning spaces that are cybersecure but also comfortable, so that students can reach their full potential without being distracted by administrative tasks. We hope that our experience with Cyber Immune products will be useful to other educational institutions, not only in terms of cybersecurity, but also in terms of student development. This approach to classroom organization helps optimize administrative processes and train tomorrow’s IT and information security specialists who will help make our world safer.
Sergey Seliverstov
Sergey Seliverstov, Director of Orenburg College of Economics and Informatics
