Lars Johansson
IT manager
The Prison and Probation Administration.

The Prison and Probation Administration was in need of a way to give managers and other mobile personnel access to their Citrix desktop environment in an easy and uncomplicated but also secure way. In the beginning the solution only pertained to laptop computers, which were to be used as thin terminals. The general opinion was, however, that it would be a waste to use powerful modern laptops as thin terminals only, it should be possible to use them for other things as well.

Then the idea of making a bootable CD with the thin client was examined. The advantage of such a disk is that it's easy to use. Just pop it in the computer and reboot the computer and everything is run off the CD.

Radically increased security

"Since you can't write to a CD security is radically increased", says Lars Johansson. "On the one hand the software can't be altered or infected by viruses, and on the other hand the user can't do anything which will affect the software per se. The worst thing that could happen is that the user gets lost in the system, somehow, but then all they have to do is reboot the computer and they are back on track."

The main advantage of this solution is that you don't need to worry about viruses and other malign software which may exist on the hard disk of the computer. There's a multitude of spyware and trojans designed to seek out passwords and other secret data. This solution means that you don't have to worry about whether such software exists on the computer, since they won't start when you use the CD.

Big interest

The interest in the system is big within the agency, not least from those who want to work from home. Many who live far from the workplace would appreciate being able to avoid unnecessary journeys and being able to work from home in a secure way.

Complement to Citrix MetaFrame

The Prison and Probation Administration uses Citrix MetaFrame internally today, and the solution is a complement to the Citrix installation. The users automatically connect securely to the agency's ThinLinc server, which in turn connects to the internal network via a Citrix client so the users can access their Citrix desktops.

"We chose to not extend our maintenance agreements with Microsoft this time", says Lars Johansson, "and this freed up resources we could use to investigate other alternatives. We are curious to see what Open Source can mean to us, and ThinLinc is one of the Open Source projects we have going."