Internet Explorer Administration Kit

[Reeder Norm]

Another reader gave the address for the Internet Explorer 
Administration Kit so I won't duplicate that.  We have experimented 
with the kit with pretty good success.  You can lock the home page, 
block mail and and news or set those to only the servers you wish. 
 You can block most settings that have drop down menus from the 
toolbar at the top.  For the price, it's really good.  Documentation 
is also good.

We are looking at the Administrator's Toolkit from Netscape.  It 
regularly costs $2,000 but to public libraries and educational 
institutions can be had for $795.  They haven't answered our question 
yet as to whether it works with Windows NT which we are going to use 
on the public worksations.

Neither kit does everything you want as to securing the PC.  We are 
using NT's policy editor to restrict which programs can run and a lot 
of other things such as eliminating all icons on the desktop.  We are 
also using NTFS (Windows NT File System) so that we can lock down by 
the folder/file what access the user can have.  Essentially we will 
give them access to the "temp" directory and nothing else.

Our biggest concern now is not what can they run, but what can they 
delete?  We found that if you typed in "norm.txt" in the URL search 
box, it says "I don't know how to run this, but here is a list of 
applications I have that you could choose to possibly run this".  It 
gave us the list of helper applications like Adobe Acrobat but also 
included many of the directories on the hard drive.  The worst feature 
of this is that on this same screen is a "delete" button which you 
could proceed to delete as many directories as you wanted.  That's why 
we are going to NTFS to eliminate that option.

If anyone else is using the Netscape Kit, we would like to hear from 
them too.

Thanks
Norm Reeder
Torrance Public Library

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From: 	Ulrich Babiak[SMTP:ubabiak at dom.de]
Sent: 	Monday, January 27, 1997 12:31 AM
To: 	Multiple recipients of list
Subject: 	Internet Explorer Administration Kit



Hello web4lib,

I have to give in to the Microsoft folks in two ways ...
first, I am switching from Netscape to the IE for our public
terminals (but I won't start a new flame war on this issue)
and second, even I as a professional information scout have not
been able to find on their web site(s) ANY useful phone number or 
email
address for inquiries about their Internet Explorer Administration 
Kit
(their web site mentions "IEAK at msn.com" -  which seems to be a direct 
link to their cute recycling bin icon).
 I even called several MS numbers in Germany
but to no avail. I think this billion dollar company did a great
job in preventing people to actually reach a competent person
directly via mail or phone.

That said, here is my humble question: has anybody here made
use of the IEAK and was it useful for customizing the browser
for public workstations? If so, which kind of license did
you have to sign? Are you aware of any library-specific IEAK support
or related projects the evil empire offers?

Just in case some members have not heard about IEAK: MS offers
this software package for only 20$  - so it seems to be a cheap
way to customize the IE for patron (or staff) use. If one could
only figure out which type of license to choose on the order page ...

Ulrich

Ulrich Babiak                         StadtBibliothek Koeln
ubabiak at stbib-koeln.de               postbox at stbib-koeln.de
Webmaster / Netzbetreuung              Josef-Haubrich-Hof 1
                                                50676 Koeln