Restricted Access

[lilzeus]

I work for a higher education institution where we have a kiosk of computers for students to use. These computers run XP Pro. At the moment we are restricting them via group policy so that:
Anonymous users could only access websites within our domain
Those who logged in with usernames and passwords could visit any website they wish with the exception of those we specified specifically

These computers were originally planned to be used for school purposes only and thats the way we want it, for security reasons.

Is there a way to control website access via group policy for authenticated users? We just spent $3300 on a proxy server to perform these duties. Was this needed? Also, would this same group policy be able to control the way that an entire subdomain accesses certain websites? For instance, we want to keep workers from say playing on Yahoo games etc.

 

[ashpp]

>Is there a way to control website access via group policy >for authenticated users?

Not to a degree you want. Group policy wasn't designed for this.

>We just spent $3300 on a proxy server to perform these >duties. Was this needed?

There are probably other cheaper ways of doing it but using GPOs isn't one of them.

Ash.