South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria reported an increase in spyware attacks in Q1 2023 according to Kaspersky. Thin clients are used in corporate networks around the world to set up workspaces at a much lower cost than when using traditional laptop or desktop computers (thick clients).
A thin client on a traditional operating system (OS), Linux or Windows-based, could potentially be targeted by different types of attacks, including spyware. A compromised thin client could serve as an entry point to the corporate network, and it could be used to gain access to confidential data, take control over other machines on the network, or run malicious software, etc.
Thin clients have gained popularity over the last few years, especially after the pandemic, as organizations were seeking cost effective ways of setting up remote workplaces. It is also believed by many that they are secure to use and less vulnerable to malware than traditional machines.
However, this belief is nothing more than a myth: thin clients running traditional operating systems are vulnerable, and our internal research shows that they can be hacked with a simple tool in under 10 minutes and be used to spy on users and/or access confidential data,” comments Victor Ivanovsky, KasperskyOS Business Development Lead.
“We believe that the future of thin client development should be determined by Cyber Immunity. Attacks on a Cyber Immune system are ineffective – they continue to function even in an aggressive environment and stop potential attackers in their tracks.”
In response to advancing cyberthreats, Kaspersky promotes the Cyber Immune approach. The Kaspersky Secure Remote Workspace solution offers a manageable and functional thin client infrastructure that is built according to the secure-by-design principle and the Cyber Immune approach that makes them more resilient to cyberattacks in comparison to traditional thin clients.
Kaspersky Secure Remote Workspace is suitable for many areas where a large number of workstations with similar tasks and a standard set of applications are used: the public sector, educational institutions, manufacturing and production plants, fuel and energy sector, healthcare, financial organizations, retail, and others.
The Cyber Immune approach is based on the principle of minimizing the attack surface of a system. This is done by reducing the number of software components that are installed on the system and by isolating these components from each other.
At the core of the solution lies KasperskyOS, a microkernel operating system. KTC excludes the possibility of exploiting a wide range of vulnerabilities common in traditional thin clients.
Another component of the solution, the unified management console solves the problem of managing and monitoring thin client infrastructure.
