Network administrators in schools will welcome the increased security options that come with Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 2000. Computers in schools are likely to be used by many students during the day and this presents administrators with all sorts of security issues. With Windows 2000, the resource kit, which is part of the “tools” program, gives hundreds of templates for setting up user policies (look uder “poledit.exe” in the ResKit option of the tools section of your Windows CD).
Computers can, for instance, be set to require validation from users before giving access to allow only certain users to log on at a particular time or to prevent last user names showing. Before implementing policy templates across a network, says Microsoft, administrators should have a clear idea of what they want to achieve.