September 2005 — SafetyNet
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The Cornerstone of Hard Drive Protection
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 d'es 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
d'es 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; d'esn’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 d'esn’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 d'es 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.
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