Contact: Tech Lab
Global Appliances, LLC.
techlab@globalappliances.com

Our SurferQuest Systems are protected against Viruses and Hacks

The recent Worm (W32Blaster/SoBig) attacks and the damage it caused at governmental institutions and big multinationals causes a lot of concern with our customers about the SurferQuest PC. The question if the SurferQuest PC can be infected or not, if it can infect other computers in the Network, etc.

How are the SurferQuest systems protected?

SurferQuest PC's are always shipped with the most recent patches of the Operating System (Windows XP) and Virus Scanner (Norton) and throughout it's placement the PC is updated on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, the time laps, between the releasing of the virus and launching/installing of the patches by Microsoft and Norton, is an unprotected time laps. This is a risk factor everybody suffers who has a PC. It is also a risk factor SurferQuest doesn't want to take. So SurferQuest developed a System that makes it impossible for Viruses to plant themselves into the PC.

How does that work?

SurferQuest takes advantage of the fact that Kiosk PC's cannot remember files because of privacy issues [read more about this here]. All files (documents/history/cookies, etc) that are created after start up will be marked with a flag, meaning "forget the very existence of this file after the session is ended". The system will simply forget them and they are un retrievable because they never existed according to the system. Even pretty sophisticated recover programs will not be able to find them anymore.

So what happens if a Virus found its way into the SurferQuest system because of the unsecured time laps due to the different stages of spread new virus and patching?
The new files will be marked as "forget the existence of this file after the session is ended" and after reboot the system is clean again.

Of course, after making a system like this we also had to prevent users from by-passing it. All in all SurferQuest has grown into a sophisticated protection of which we are very proud of.

I hope this eliminates the concerns about SurferQuest PC's and Viruses.

Note: Because of this security procedure also key-logging-programs do not stand a chance with SurferQuest systems.