Protection and security problems

[spober at manhattan.edu]

We've been having odd problems with the security software we use and I
was wondering if any other subscribers might be able to shed light on
these problems.

Most of our public computers run Netscape, and a few of them also have
Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint on them.  These are Pentiums of
varying vintage and speed, with different amounts of memory (you know
how it is - state of the art when ordered, creaky old things three years
hence...) 

We've been running IKiosk on all of our public computers, and recently I
upgraded that prgram from version 3.31 to 3.33.  The IKiosk works pretty
well (and the 3.33 version seems to have resolved one of the problems I
ahd with running IKiosk with Win98), but doesn't protect 100%. In
particular we've had problems with protecting the hard drives on those
computers that have Word and the other MS apps on them.  Also, we've had
people download and install AOL Instant Messenger, games, etc. using
Netscape.  (Whether they are then able to use them, I don't know - I
think they can install them but not access them unless the startup is
through the web browser)

We tried putting Fortres on some of the computers , but we've had some
problems with this.  We originally were using an early release of
version 3 without problems, but the original installation disk became
corrupt, so the tech support folks there sent us new files.  These were
Fortres 3 build 204.  The problem with this version was that we were
getting registry errors consistently reported on Windows 98 bootup with
Fortres installed, even when the 'registry protection' options were not
used.  Uninstalling Fortres fixed this and downloading a fresh copy of
this software from the vendor didn't make any difference, so I am
wondering if there's some problem with using Fortres v.3 build 204 on
Win 98 machines.  Anyone have this come up?  Did upgrading to v.4 fix
the problems?  

Another problem we had with the v.3/204 Fortres was that it seemed to
interfere with our fast shutdown utility.  This is a small onscreen
'shutdown or restart' box from the Ikiosk folks that lets us turn off
the Start menu while still allowing graceful Windows shutdown. 

We are running Netscape 3.04 on some machines, and 4.61 on the rest. 
(We still use 3.04 for those browsers limited to our catalog and
databases because the faux proxy config is easier to set up in level 3
Netscape).   I've read how some libraries set their prefs.js file to
read-only as an additional protection.  I tried this on some of the
computers running Netscape 4.61, but Netscape was constantly crashing. 
It wasn't just crashing when people tried changing the prefs - it was
crashing at other times as well, often when an alertbox would have a
checkbox in it and the user would try to uncheck the option.   Is this a
peculiarity of Netscape v,4.X, or do you just not mind that read-only
prefs cause these crashes?  
Incidentally, I know that some people insert a line in autoexec.bat to
delete the netscape cache at startup.  Does that really improve
performance?  Someone on another list mentioned using a ramdisk for the
cache - is anyone using that, and with what results?

Stacy Pober
Information Alchemist
Manhattan College Libraries
spober at manhattan.edu