The Need for Deep Freeze

Keyloggers.  Spyware.  Data corruption.

Nowadays, these three words strike fear into hearts of users everywhere.  However, I will direct this article towards the organizations – such as schools, libraries, Internet cafes, as well as even corporations.  These behemoths serve a multitude of users daily – ranging from a couple hundred at a local library, to several thousand at a popular university.  The chances of having a careless user download rogue spyware or a bad egg installing keyloggers are insanely high – in fact, a rumour that I myself had caught flying around was that an organization I attended had been infected with keyloggers.  The rumour was dispelled when a friend of mine informed me that the organization used Deep Freeze – which then sparked the question: What is Deep Freeze?

Deep Freeze is an intelligent solution that offers absolute system integrity, according to its creator, Faronics.

Faronics Deep Freeze helps eliminate workstation damage and downtime by making computer configurations indestructible. Once Deep Freeze is installed on a workstation, any changes made to the computer—regardless of whether they are accidental or malicious—are never permanent. Deep Freeze provides immediate immunity from many of the problems that plague computers today—accidental system misconfiguration, malicious software activity, and incidental system degradation.

Deep Freeze ensures computers are absolutely bulletproof, even when users have full access to system software and settings. Users get to enjoy a pristine and unrestricted computing experience, while IT personnel are freed from tedious helpdesk requests.

Source: http://www.faronics.com/html/deepfreeze.asp

Basically, a computer (or workstation) is programmed to retain certain programs – for example, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Word 2007, but otherwise is reformatted everytime the system reboots.  Sure, that means that everyone’s documents stored in My Documents will be deleted besides the Sample Pictures.  But, that also means that if the system gets infected, it will also be removed as soon as the computer is rebooted.  This is what I would consider an ideal solution to most organizations’ problems with system integrity.

If you’re a home user reading this and contemplating getting Deep Freeze, I would think twice – although the chances of you accidentally installing spyware are still high, I think that it would be impractical for you to sacrifice your computing experience for paranoia.  Addressing keyloggers, no one would be silly enough to install a keylogger on themselves (besides, there would be no point to that).  However, for organizations that can’t afford to leak information, or organizations that treasure the security and trust of their users (such as libraries), I think this is a great big picture piece of software.  Heck, it gained my trust.

For more information and case studies, please visit Faronics’ web page for Deep Freeze:

http://www.faronics.com/html/deepfreeze.asp