By Groum Abate
The
Ethiopian government is to distribute laptops to 250,000 teachers in Ethiopia.
A company to secure, and manage security on the new machines, which will
contain sensitive data, has also been announced.
The chosen company, FullArmor, a leader in enterprise policy management,
announced it will deploy Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) on laptops for
Ethiopian teachers beginning in the summer of 2009 to lower costs and take
advantage of advanced features on Windows 7.
FullArmor's PolicyPortal will secure, configure and manage the laptops that
will eventually be distributed to up to 250,000 teachers in the country.
In cooperation with Microsoft Corp., FullArmor performed extensive testing of
Windows 7 RC to ensure its stability and reliability. This in addition to the
cost savings from the reduced hardware needed to run Windows 7 were the most
compelling reasons for deploying Windows 7 RC.
The advanced features in Windows 7 enable FullArmor's PolicyPortal to implement
GEO fencing security policies on the teacher's laptops. These laptops contain
sensitive teacher and student data. Therefore, using the Windows 7 location
API, PolicyPortal can determine when a laptop drifts outside of the given area
that was assigned to it. If the laptop is then determined to be stolen,
PolicyPortal can remotely wipe the data from the laptop.
"Our goal with Windows 7 is to help our customers reduce costs and extend
the Windows platform to provide greater value," said Danny Kim, CTO of
FullArmor. "Our solution, PolicyPortal, is a service that runs on Windows
Azure to manage laptops running all flavours of Windows client, including
Windows 7. We believe the combination of PolicyPortal on Windows Azure, and
Windows 7 client is a great combination to lower costs for our customers, while
increasing functionality."
Source: http://www.capitalethiopia.com/archive/2009/May/week1/local_news.htm#19