Transparent or Clear Screen Lock or Screensaver

Status
Not open for further replies.
I have been reading this board for I while - never posted! Well here is my first.

I work for a pharmaceutical company and was given the mandate to strengthen the security of the systems on the production floor. These computers display the status of various processes. We want this information to remain visible to everyone but now want to control who can actually use the system. When someone does login/unlock the system we need to audit that event.

So far the only way I have found is using a third party app called Transparent Screen Lock ( http://www.e-motional.com/tscreenlock.htm ). This is pretty much a transparent screensaver that you can configure to let users unlock using their own domain account credentials.

I have done some testing with this product – it seems to work as advertised and has pretty much all the options you would expect. I like the fact that users can use their own domain passwords but worry about that at the same time. My first question is: When evaluating such a product, what are the things I should be looking for? What should I be testing for?

Anyone with any experience in the pharmaceutical industry knows that security is a very big concern so I am pretty apprehensive about implementing such a product. For this reason I would like to open a discussion about my problem (i.e. securing a PC leaving the screen visible) as well as this possible solution. I will open the discussion with a number of questions.

What are my options? Does anyone have any other solutions? (Please don’t suggest locking the PC in a glass cabinet – anyone who has tried that will tell you that causes more problems than it solves)

How ‘secure’ is such a product”?

Does anyone have any experience with Transparent Screen Lock?

Has anyone encountered/solved the same problem?

Any feedback, suggestions, options, etc. would be most welcome.

mArty
 
You should check for obvious ways of getting around the lock..

Can you specify which users exactly can unlock the computer? (Allowing all domain users to do so is bad).
Does it blcok _all_ key combinations? Ctrl+Alt+Del? Ctrl+Shift+Esc? What if I plug in another USB keyboard or a mouse? What if I reboot the computer?

Also, make sure the system cannot be accessed over the network. If the machine belongs to a domain, then by default it means anyone with Domain Admin privileges can do anything to that computer remotely.
 
Hi Nodsu,

Thanks for our suggestions - they are all good.

It does seem to block all the key combinations you suggested. As far as rebooting there is an option to lock as soon as the user logs in if it was rebooted while locked.

So far so good. Any other ideas?

mArty
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back