A world leader in thin client solutions, IGEL Technology helps organizations improve the agility, efficiency, and security of their virtual desktop and application delivery systems. They produce one of the industry's widest range of thin clients, based on Linux and Microsoft® Windows®, allowing customers to access to a broad spectrum of server-based infrastructures and applications. They also offer a powerful and intuitive management software for easy deployment and administration of thin clients throughout any-size organization. Partnerships with industry leaders like Citrix®, Red Hat®, VMWare®, and Microsoft® ensure that they provide the most up-to-date technology and trust-worthy security to their clients in industries that include Healthcare, Education & Research, Public Sector, Financial, Insurance, Retail, Logistics, and Manufacturing. IGEL Technology has offices the United States, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and their award-winning, in-house R&D team is located in Augsburg, Germany.

Business Challenge
While IGEL Thin Clients have made it easier for users to securely access critical information, simply using passwords to authenticate users can still put a company at risk, especially if Single Sign On is used. And once a session is opened, users want to securely authenticate to applications and even switch workstations while continuing the same session.

SafeSign Identity Client (IC) & smart cards together with Linux based IGEL Thin Clients offer a unique combination of applications for authentication, access control and personalized desktop environments for the roaming user. SafeSign IC enforces two-factor security, requiring the end user to have both the USB token or smart card (something you have) and a Personal Identity Number (something you know). USB tokens and smart cards are physically and logically tamper resistant, ensuring that the end user’s digital credentials can not be copied, modified or shared.

Session authentication & roaming
The smart card can hold a set of user specific sessions, which can also provide Single Sign On for ICA, Program Neighborhood, RDP and terminal emulation sessions. After smart card insertion and Personal Identity Number (PIN) entry the user has immediate access to any desktop of a well-defined pool of Thin Clients. He sees his individual sessions which might also start automatically. With RDP and ICA it is also possible to reconnect to disconnected sessions so that it is possible for the user to continue the work at another Thin Client just where he left it when removing the smart card or USB token.

Support for different applications
In environments demanding strong authentication, encryption and/or digital signatures, the smart card can hold X.509 certificates administered and accessed by the SafeSign Identity Client middleware. These certificates can be used with IGEL Thin Clients for SSL authentication in Mozilla® Firefox and within ICA sessions. In this regard Windows Domain Logon with smart card authentication is possible through ICA, and even roaming users connecting to a load-balanced Citrix XenApp (Presentation Server) Farm are supported thanks to integration of the SafeSign IC libraries into the Thin Client firmware.

Flexibility with SafeSign IC
The customer is free to start using smart cards or USB tokens with an easily administrable solution for local access control at the Thin Client. Later he can add applications to the smart cards or USB tokens as the demand grows, up to certificates as part of a PKI solution, without the need to change the smart cards or the client infrastructure. Just upgrade your IGEL smart card applications with SafeSign IC smart card to the fullfeatured SafeSign IC version.