The Cornerstone of Hard Drive Protection
T.H.E. Journal | 09/01/05
Centurion Technologies VP Keith Rickman on the upside of relying on reboot/restore technology to guard against viruses and user sabotage.
T.H.E.: How does reboot/ restore technology differ from antivirus/spyware protection?
Rickman: Antivirus protection detects only known viruses, which are those that have been identified and a definition created. This means that unknown viruses—those not yet recognized or with no definitions written for them —will still bypass antivirus protection. Conversely, reboot/restore protection does not require recognition or definition specifics, and will protect against both known and unknown viruses. And with spyware protection, much like antivirus protection, only items that appear to be spyware or adware are eliminated. But reboot/restore technology provides a blanket of protection that eliminates any unwanted change instantly. Spyware elimination products also can be confusing and time-consuming with the daily, weekly, or hourly scans that must be run to identify threats. With reboot/restore technology, the user simply reboots, and the machine is cleaned of all malicious code.
Administrators often use policies; doesn’t that keep users from getting to anything that could harm the system?
Policies are great for limiting availability. However, technicians are still needed to clean up the areas where users are allowed to go,and, unfortunately, must still deal with basic user error. With reboot/restore protection, it doesn’t matter what end users are doing or where they are going since they can’t harm the machine. This allows for a full user experience with no restrictions. If policies are required for limiting content availability, they can be used in conjunction with our protection. This provides total control along with complete hard drive protection.
How does reboot/restore technology protect against user error, or users who try to sabotage machines? All changes that occur during use are written to a temporary storage space and not the hard drive; this space is cleared upon reboot. Anything a user might do—upload files, download games and music, or even delete everything from the hard drive—is temporary. It seems to the user as though these changes are sticking,but an administrator knows that with a simple reboot, the machine is back to its original state.
WHERE’S THE PROTECTION? In the fight for security, it’s good to know where the battles are won—or lost.
Read story online (opens a new window)