Keeping Public Access Computers Secure

By: Maryam Mahjoub

San Juan unified K-12 school district has over 45,000 students and over 74 sites.  They were constantly busy with support calls and troubleshooting errors on their 4000 windows machines. Public access computer security was a top priority for San Juan Unified’ IT team.  They wanted to make sure that their students were able to use the computers without worry.

“Our biggest problems occurred in minimally supervised areas,” said Chuck Taylor, a Microcomputer Specialist at San Juan Unified. “For example, students were often left unsupervised on library computers and kids would purposely trash the operating systems. Other kids, who meant no harm, caused damage by going to their favorite web sites and unintentionally inviting spyware, malware, worms, and other harmful programs into the system.

It was at a CETPA tradeshow that Mr. Taylor first heard about a product from Faronics Technologies called Deep Freeze. Deep Freeze for those who don’t know, is a reboot to restore software. It is the perfect solution to increase public access computer security. With a simple restart computers are brought to their original state, free of malware, spyware, and configuration drift.

We noticed the difference overnight,” said Mr. Taylor. “Nothing—not the Google Toolbar, Spybot, Pest Patrol, or even Norton AntiVirus—made a faster difference than Deep Freeze. The compliments from these once frustrated sites and users still come in all the time.” Best of all, no user has managed to breach public access computer security since Deep Freeze has been implemented.

Read more about this in the full case study.