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Student Lockdown software

F

feffrey

Gawd
Joined
Oct 26, 2010
Messages
585
I'm looking for some software to lock down lab computers during web testing.
Needs to be able to use a white list for applications and websites and be compatible with any browser.
The main thing is it just has to work 100% of the time.
Right now we are using Faronics, which is horrible. Only reason we have kept it is due to it being practically free.
 
Lanschool will allow you to lock various things on the computer including printing, web browsing, USB drives, etc, but also white list web sites they can go to. You also get a nifty GUI that shows you all of their screens as well as allows you to lock the screens and do remote control.

Unfortunately it cost money, but the price has been much better since they were bought out.
 
Why do the white-listing on the machines themselves? Just route them through a proxy/content filter, and do the blocks/allows from there.
 
bigdogchris said:
Lanschool will allow you to lock various things on the computer including printing, web browsing, USB drives, etc, but also white list web sites they can go to. You also get a nifty GUI that shows you all of their screens as well as allows you to lock the screens and do remote control.

Unfortunately it cost money, but the price has been much better since they were bought out.
Click to expand...

I'll check them out.

PTNL said:
Why do the white-listing on the machines themselves? Just route them through a proxy/content filter, and do the blocks/allows from there.
Click to expand...

We don't do any proxy / filtering now other than torrent blocking, and the computers are only locked down for a few hours at a time once a month. We have new PA firewalls that can do url filtering so that might be one way to do it. Still have to be able to block printing and apps from opening.

I wish all web testing would use a secured browser and not need anything else to lock down the computer. The NBME tests we do actually have a secured browser that runs and locks it down for us. Unfortunately that is just one of the testing sites we have to support.
 
When I was working at a community college we use smart shield. We also used a lockdown browser. I can't think of the name of it right now. It really might be called lock down browser.
 
Take a look at windows steady state, you can lock down almost anything. Only, down side is it makes log in time increase quite a bit.
 
ComputerGeek said:
Take a look at windows steady state, you can lock down almost anything.
Click to expand...
SteadyState is dead and the team is disbanded. I believe that it was even removed from download a while back. There are plenty of alternatives, though.
 
There's a big difference between blocking a wesbite and putting the PC into a "steady" or "frozen" state.

He needs to stop kids from browsing the web at certain times but allow some web sites, which would require a program that can be centrally managed and be turned on and off on the fly. Think about this before you answer.
 
Last edited:
PTNL said:
SteadyState is dead and the team is disbanded. I believe that it was even removed from download a while back. There are plenty of alternatives, though.
Click to expand...

It's still available and I am still using it on some PC's, I haven't touched the the PC's for over a year now, they haven't had a single problem, virus or anything. It is somewhat of a testament to how good it works.

bigdogchris said:
There's a big difference between blocking a wesbite and putting the PC into a "steady" or "frozen" state.

He needs to stop kids from browsing the web at certain times but allow some web sites, which would require a program that can be centrally managed and be turned on and off on the fly. Think about this before you answer.
Click to expand...

He said that he needs a "white list for applications" that doesn't sound like only websites but maybe I am wrong. Steady State does this and allows you to choose which applications you want to whitelist. And there is no need to get twitchy I am just trying to help. ;)
 
ComputerGeek said:
It's still available and I am still using it on some PC's, I haven't touched the the PC's for over a year now, they haven't had a single problem, virus or anything. It is somewhat of a testament to how good it works.
Click to expand...
I agree that SteadyState was a good product, but it is no longer available.
 
Come to think of it, there is an open source Lanschool clone. It's called iTALC. It's pretty goood, but it runs a little differently. You set up a primary server, then create groups on there, and assign computers to the groups. It has similar functionality to Lanschool, but requires a little more setup, but that leads to more control since you can watch everyone, rather than just one channel at a time.
 
Everything you are requesting can be done with AD / Group Policy and a decent UTM (like PA).
 
I'm attending Microsoft TechEd this week. During the opening Keynote, they were doing some hyping of Win8.1. One of their points made me think of this thread.

Apparently Win8.1 will allow you to lock programs down when other programs are running. So if your testing program is running, users won't be able to open a browser, but they can open calculator. Stuff like that.

You could do it today with GPOs, but this new feature was specifically designed for schools and machines like Kiosks.

Doesn't help you today, but it's something to keep in mind.
 
I'm sure the OP has found something in the last month, but @ work we use Group Policy for the local PC permissions and IPrism for web filtering.
 
strend said:
I'm sure the OP has found something in the last month, but @ work we use Group Policy for the local PC permissions and IPrism for web filtering.
Click to expand...

unfortunately I haven't yet :(

Faronics which we currently use is just Lanschool rebranded and has the same problems we have now.

Netop seemed like it might work but I have not been able to get it to work when the student machine is in a different vlan as the management.

Steady State is dead and we are using windows 7 for this lab so that won't work.

iTALC doesn't look like it can do white lists websites and programs. I do need to test it more though to make sure

We do have some PA firewalls now, but we don't have all the licensing yet so I can't do web filtering yet.
Group policy is not an option as one of the computer labs in our building are not "ours" and we have no control of them. I can get them to install programs on them but that is it.
 
Got a partial solution going with a combination of Palo Alto url filtering, group policy for our machines, and Faronics blocking apps on the other lab computers.
Still trying to find better fix as this still allows browsing internal websites. I can't re-configure the network so they can only get out to internet as that would screw a crap ton of other stuff up and affect a number of others.
Anyway tried Respondus lockdown browser and Examsoft but both of them require the test to be created by them and that is not an option.
 
Ive used couple of lock down softwares that I can vouch for. One being clean slate and another being reboot restore rx which is a freeware. they work pretty well for what I wanted to use it for
 
TimMill said:
Ive used couple of lock down softwares that I can vouch for. One being clean slate and another being reboot restore rx which is a freeware. they work pretty well for what I wanted to use it for
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll give those a try.
 
PTNL said:
SteadyState is dead and the team is disbanded. I believe that it was even removed from download a while back. There are plenty of alternatives, though.
Click to expand...

feffrey said:
I'm looking for some software to lock down lab computers during web testing.
Needs to be able to use a white list for applications and websites and be compatible with any browser.
The main thing is it just has to work 100% of the time.
Right now we are using Faronics, which is horrible. Only reason we have kept it is due to it being practically free.
Click to expand...

ill give a hand to steady state I go to a cyber school where they supply us the computers and they use windows steady state. it had me looked down to the tee the only way I got through it was physically moving to jumper to reset to bios password than using a password decoding/removing software of a bootable jumpdrive to get in the admin account and disable it. absolutely no other way. rivet the case shut and you should have no problem keeping anybody limited.
 
feffrey said:
I'm looking for some software to lock down lab computers during web testing.
Needs to be able to use a white list for applications and websites and be compatible with any browser.
The main thing is it just has to work 100% of the time.
Right now we are using Faronics, which is horrible. Only reason we have kept it is due to it being practically free.
Click to expand...
:D :D
Sounds like you're gearing up for PARCC testing.
We've explored the PARCC requirements (a moving target if there ever was one) and we've determined that we are going to go the path of a locked down general student account just for PARCC testing combined with GPO's and AppBlocker which is built into Win7 and newer when setup properly in group policy. It prevents programs from being able to run.

Also as an FYI I've heard rumblings from our state edu department that there is a strong possibility of PARCC tests being delivered through a client rather than web based. If this is true the client would take care of a lot of the lockdown for you since I'm sure it would run full screen and prevent students from closing it and getting to other parts of the computer.

For general lab management we use NetOp Vision.
 
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