Security and NT Workstation

[mercury at voicenet.com]

Hello List Members,

Long time no ask question, so here goes:

Once upon a time I maintained security for our public Internet PCs in the following 
way:  I created a desktop (i.e. profile)  which featured shortcuts to only those apps
we wished our to patrons use.  I then used system policy editor to lock down the public
PCs in a uniform way.

The profile was stored on a Win NT 3.5 / 4.0 server, which distributed the desktop to
all of the public computers in question.  These PCs have always run Win 95 / 98.

For a number of reasons, I gradually migrated away from this setup to third-party
solutions, and have ended up at our current configuration: WinSelect / Ikiosk in
conjunction
with Fortress.

Now, also for a number of reasons, the question of using Windows NT 4.0 Workstation
on these public PCs has arisen.  Workstation would replace Win 95 / 98.

My query is this:  (and for purposes of this query, I'm NOT interested in NT 4.0 vs.
2000, but thanks for the thought!)  Is there some great advantage to using Workstation
on the client PCs from a security point of view?  Won't using Workstation greatly 
resemble my first solution described above?  Workstation allows for mandatory profiles:
so does Win 95 / 98.  Workstation leans heavily on system policy editor, which I'd used
before.  Workstation requires logins; I'd set up the PCs to require logging on to get to
Windows.  

Apart from share and file permissions, what's the advantage here?  What obvious
thing(s) am I missing?  I imagine the number of system crashes would decrease a fair
amount if I moved away from third-party software, but I'm inquiring about advantages
intrinsic to Workstation 4.0.

Many Thanks,

Jeff Papier
Senior Network Librarian
South Brunswick Public Library
Monmouth Jct., NJ 08530
mercury at voicenet.com
(732) 329-4000 ext. 286

 



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