Maintaining the stability and functionality of public access computers is an on going process.  Due to the nature of the multi-user access kiosks; temporary cached information, constant updates and the ever present dangers of malware can render as system virtually unusable.  So …. we headed out to find a possible alternative to the inherited threats to the public access kiosk.

One alternative the we have employed was the use of Solid State embedded systems.  These systems employ an image of the system that resided on a Firmware chip. Upon boot up, the system loads this image.  Using the same image helps eliminate the reloading of system changes from any prior session. System integrity and security is inherent upon reboot.

Second alternative involves systems without the utilization of an embedded image, but the use of a predefined image on a  protected local disk partition. Again the same image was loaded each time avoiding any system changes during prior sessions.  One such application may help us with this application, Deepfreeze by Faronics(www.faronics.com).  This application works on multiple platforms(Windows. Mac OS X, Linux) and has server versions for centralized image distribution and scalability.  We have downloaded and tested the latest windows client evaluation version 6.30.021.1931. Installation was simple and intuitive. For the command-line savy systems administrators out there,  there were also silent installation options.  So far the application has functioned as expected. We will need to continue our studies and really put the system through a thorough gauntlet of potential system compromising changes and see what happens.  Sounds like fun….. Tests that involves attempts at hacking and compromising a system?! ….yeah!