Microsoft Office 2007 Pro NSW seeks to build unhac

By Brett Winterford on Sep 23, 2009 twelve:36 PM
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The world's "most hostile computing environment".
The NSW Department of Schooling is using asset-tracking application, RFID tags, and BIOS-embedded filtering smarts to roll out 240,000 netbook pcs into what CIO Stephen Wilson calls "the most hostile setting you can roll computer systems into" - the neighborhood large college.

The rollout of Lenovo netbooks, funded underneath the Federal Government's Digital Training Revolution initiative, is a enormous logistical and IT safety problem, and the answer Wilson and his team has put jointly to repair these troubles could nicely be applicable to any company IT department.

Over four decades, some 240,Cheap Office 2010,000 Lenovo netbooks will probably be offered to college students in 12 months 9. The netbooks can be stored right up until 12 months 12, or completely should the student finish their scientific studies at the college. Netbooks are also being offered to teachers.

To get receipt from the netbooks, college students and mother and father are asked to indication kinds during which they acknowledge their obligation to acquire treatment from the devices and use them appropriately.

They are armed with an enterprise version from the new Windows 7 working program, Microsoft Office,Microsoft Office 2007 Pro, the Adobe CS4 inventive suite, Apple iTunes,Office 2010 Pro Key, and subject material geared to pupils. Even though the netbooks are loaded with a lot of a huge selection of dollars of computer software, 2GB RAM and a six-hour battery, the cost to the NSW Department of Training is less than $500 a unit.

Underneath the covers with the netbooks - and within the network that controls them - lies a great deal more smarts to ensure that the total cost of ownership of each machine does not blow out.

Wilson said that while private schools and other states have taken a "carte blanche" approach to handing out laptops as part of the Digital Education Revolution, the DET rollout is "among the more systematic, automated and paperless" projects ever embarked upon.

Security smarts

At the physical layer, each netbook is password-protected and embedded with monitoring application at the BIOS level from the machine.

That is administered through an enterprise services bus, which also connects the Remedy suite for asset management, Active Directory for authentication and Aruba's Airwave for wireless network management.

If a netbook were to be stolen or sold,Office Professional 2010 Key, the section can remotely disable it above the network. Even if the hard drive in the machine was swapped out or the working system wiped, it would be useless to unauthorised users.

Already, it has noted the loss or damage of just six netbooks out of the 20,000 rolled out since August - and have tracked a teacher employing their device on a field trip in New Zealand.

While there is really a serial number and barcode on each computer, the department said that thieves or college students might be able to remove them. To combat this, it is employing passive RFID chips on every machine that will enable them to be identified "even if they were dropped in a bathtub".

Being passive,Microsoft Office Professional 2010, an RFID reader needs to be within close proximity with the device to read it. (Active RFID transmitted a signal back to base.)

The division used the AppLocker functionality within Windows 7 to dictate which applications are installed.

Web access on the netbooks is filtered according to a corporate protection policy (utilizing McAfee's SmartFilter technology) plus an additional SOCKS-based proxy client, which provides web filtering on the network layer.

The devices also use Microsoft's Forefront Antivirus technology.

Upgrades

With such a huge fleet of pcs in the hands of college students, Wilson said it would be "unrealistic" for the department to offer technical support for software program applications.

The netbooks were built so that the section can remotely upgrade and patch the devices over a wireless network.

It used Microsoft's Method Centre Configuration Manager tool to distribute software down to devices.

The update service switches off once a pupil finishes year twelve.

Wilson said there was no way such a large fleet of devices could be managed at such low cost without the smarts embedded within Microsoft's new operating method.

"There was no way we could do any of this on XP," he said. "Windows seven nailed it for us."