Product
Review:
Layton
Technology’s
Audit Wizard
by Mitchell Levine
Longtime readers of Education
Update’s Technology and Education section are undoubtedly aware
of the almost $1.1 billion the New York City school system
has spent on technology and technology education. Despite
that wise investment, one thing that‘s unfortunately
remained a limited resource is IT support. Due to funding
constraints, many schools have been forced to supplement
their paid IT management with student volunteers. While remaining
a viable solution to the tech support problem, it does create
some critical issues, one of which is system integrity. With
numerous users and unpaid student volunteers managing systems,
an administrator needs to be able to ensure that inappropriate
and bootleg software isn’t installed on institutional
networks, and monitor peripheral usage as well as internet
activity.
Worried about your library
or AV club student techs installing illicit software downloaded
from a P2P file sharing site? Run a system check to determine
the software currently on the system, and, once its existence
has been confirmed, a database purge will wipe it right out
of your network. At the same time, compile a complete internet
history and list of cookies logged, and you’ll know
exactly how your computers have been used with accurate time
and date stamps available. Plus, the software will provide
a thorough register of hardware as well, including data like
network and IP addresses, installation dates, hard drive
capacities, BIOS and peripheral data, memory configuration,
and much more.
Audit Wizard can help protect network and local
computers against spyware, keyloggers, and other malicious
programs often injected from removable disks, by simply running
a regular system audit, followed by a purge. It even supports
remote scans, enabling a system administrator to perform a
scan on remote machines using BIOS or TCP/IP protocols over
the Net.
Although the package
is not as well known, or publicized, as some of the more
boutique, pervasively marketed software and hardware solutions
on the shelves these days, based on both the uniqueness of
its features, and the cost factor, it deserves to be. Any
school technology buyer with a need to produce results in
the system security area—which,
actually, should include just about any school tech buyer in
New York—should give this product at least a Missouri
look. For information, or to purchase and download, log on
to the manufacturers site, www.laytontechnology.com.#
