Faronic

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FaronicsDeepFreeze
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What is it?

• DeepFreeze is an application that freezes the
  hard drive of a system.
• Once a system is frozen, any change to data or
  the system itself does not actually take place.
• When the computer is restarted, the system goes
  back to the state when it was frozen.

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Advantages

• Very useful tool for IT departments (Kent State
  uses this tool for public computers).
• No more imaging of drives if they are corrupted.
• Centralize control to push updates to computers

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Disadvantages

• Without the centralized control, it is very
  annoying to disable DeepFreeze in order to modify
  files.
• User would have to thaw the machine, reboot, make
  changes, freeze the machine, and finally reboot.
• For home use, users would not go through the
  complete cycle in order to modify data.

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Cont.

• If the system is booted from a different medium
  (USB device, network server), then it would not
  be protected.

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Confidentiality vs. Integrity

• DeepFreeze does not modify data when the system
  is frozen. Therefore, the integrity of the data
  would remain at all times.
• Even though the integrity of the data remains,
  the confidentiality of it still depends on the
  OS.
• Malicious users can get confidential data, even
  if the system is frozen.

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Tamperproof

• When a system is frozen, any change to data does
  not actually take place.
• On a reboot, the original state of the system
  (when it was first frozen) is brought back.
• Windows can be tamperproof with DeepFreeze!!!!

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How does it work?

• Deep Freeze is a kernel-level driver that
  protects hard drive integrity by redirecting
  information being written to the hard drive or
  partition, leaving the original data intact. This
  redirected information is no longer referenced
  once the computer is restarted, thus restoring
  the system to its original state at the disk
  sector level. - Wikipedia

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Cont.

• DeepFreeze is proprietary software, so the exact
  way it works is not disclosed.
• The internet community believes
• - A virtual drive is created where all changes
  take place.
• - A file on the system is created.
• - Everything is put on memory.

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Final Notes

• DeepFreeze is available for Windows, Mac OS X,
  and SUSE Linux.
• In order to bring up the DeepFreeze console, a
  combination of Ctrl Alt Shift F6 is needed.

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Bibliography

• http//www.faronics.com/en/Products/DeepFreeze/Dee
  pFreezeCorporate.aspx
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Freeze_(software
  )
• http//answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid200911
  23023642AAIIAwb
• http//www.faronics.com/Faronics/Documents/DFL_Man
  ual.pdf