Setting Up a Secure System


Security is a definite concern in self-running presentations. Any time you leave a computer unattended with the public, you run the risk of tampering and theft. At the very least, some guru geek will come along and experiment with your PC to see what you've got and whether he or she can do anything clever with it. At the worst, your entire computer setup could disappear entirely.

There are two levels of security involved in unattended presentation situations:

  • The security of the physical hardware

  • The security that the presentation will continue to run

Securing Your Hardware

For the most foolproof hardware security, get it out of sight. Hide everything except the monitor in a locked drawer, cabinet, or panel of the kiosk you are using, if possible. If you are at a trade show or convention where you don't have the luxury of a lockable system, at least put everything except the monitor under a table, and try to make sure that someone is attending the booth at all times.

Caution 

Don't drape running computers with cloth or any other material that inhibits the airflow around them; doing so increases the risk of overheating.

In an unattended setting, the best way to protect your monitor from walking off is to place it behind a Plexiglas panel where nobody can touch it. Without such a barrier, you run the risk of some jokester turning off its power or turning down its contrast, and anyone who knows something about computers could walk right up and disconnect it and carry it away.

You can also buy various locking cables at computer stores and office supply centers. These cables lock down computer equipment to prevent it from being removed. They include steel cables with padlocks, metal locking brackets, and electronically controlled magnetic locks.

Making Sure the Presentation Continues to Run

I admit that I am guilty of disrupting other people's presentations. When I walk up to an unattended computer in a store, the first thing I do is abort whatever program is running and restart the system to check out its diagnostics and find out what kind of computer it is. It's a geek thing, but all geeks do it.

You will doubtless encounter such geeks wherever you set up your presentation, but especially at trade shows and conventions. (We geeks love trade shows and conventions.) Your mission is to prevent them from stopping your presentation.

The best way to prevent someone from tinkering with your presentation is to get the input devices out of sight. Hide the CPU (the main box of the computer), the keyboard, and the mouse. You can't disconnect the keyboard and mouse from the PC, or an error message will appear, but you can hide them. Again, don't cover them with anything that might restrict the airflow, or you might end up with an overheated PC. You can also set up the following security measures in your presentation file:

  • On the Slide Show tab, click Set Up Slide Show and make sure you have chosen Browsed at a Kiosk. This disables the mouse while the slide show is running. The only way to stop the show will be to use the keyboard. This works best for self-running shows where the slides advance automatically.

    EXPERT TIP 

    If you make the keyboard available for user navigation, the Esc key will also be available for stopping the program. A utility is available that disables the Esc key at http://www.mvps.org/skp/noesc.htm.

  • Show the presentation using the PowerPoint Viewer program rather than PowerPoint itself. That way nobody can access PowerPoint and create a new presentation to show. For further security, remove the PowerPoint application completely from the PC on which the presentation is showing.

  • Set a startup password for your PC so that if people manage to reboot it, they won't get into your PC to tamper with its settings. This is usually set through the BIOS setup program. If you can't do that, set a Windows startup password for each of the user accounts. (Do that through the User Accounts in the Control Panel in Windows.)

  • Assign a password to a PowerPoint file, as you learned in Chapter 3, to prevent it from being opened, modified, or both. Although this will not prevent a running presentation from being stopped, it will at least prevent it from being altered or deleted. However, if it is already open, hackers will have full access to it, and if you set it to have a password only for modifications, a hacker could save it under a different name, make changes, and then run the changed version.




Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 Bible
Microsoft Powerpoint 2007 Bible
ISBN: 0470144939
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 268
Authors: Faithe Wempen

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