Need an opinion for a security strategy

[whs]

The people of my local computer club asked me to recommend a security setup for the club computers. Those are XP, Vista and Win7 - more than a dozen all together and most are double or triple booting. Some also have Ubuntu on them, but that is not used a lot.
They were recently hammered with viruses, in part apparently because people used contaminated USB sticks on them. Up to now, free AVG was installed. But obviously nobody really did a regular update.
I plan to recommend MSE and the windows firewall because that works well for me and there is no additional cost. But I wonder whether any of you has a better recommendation - especially for the XP systems because I do not have any of those and thus no idea what's good for them.
Your input is appreciated.

 

[hackerman1]

hi !

one quick: turn off "Autoplay".

 

[jav]

If it computers on the club and they only need things on it and don't write anything to it.
Then maybe light virtualization solutions like:
Faronics Deep Freeze Windows Editions - ABSOLUTE System Integrity
Shadow Defender - the easiest PC/laptop security and privacy protection tool
Returnil - The Real Security for your home or business - Download RVS now to protect your PC.
StorageCraft ShadowUser - Product Details

Or Anti executables:
Faronics Anti-Executable - Application Whitelisting for Endpoint Security
Horizon DataSys Inc. - Executable Lockdown Whitelist AUPs

Windows features:
Anti executeble (whitelisting):
SRP (Software Restriction Policy)
How to make a disallowed-by-default Software Restriction Policy
PGS - Pretty Good Security - Wilders Security Forums (It will make your task easier with SRP)

Applocker (only Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate)
http://207.46.16.252/en-us/magazinebeta/2009.10.geekofalltrades.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd723686(WS.10).aspx


And I will recommend putting all computer under LUA (Limited User Account) and put UAC (User Account Control) level on maximum and turn off autoplay atleast. (this will make it harder for users to "sabotage" computers)

Overall, in seeking Ideas and suggestion on Security setup I found this article very usefull: Securing Your PC and Data - Wilders Security Forums
It;s made by BlueZanetti, Administrator of the wilderssecurity forum which is one of the well known security forums.

Hope it will help you.

P.S. I can't belive that when I first registered on sevenforums I was asking suggestions and had almost no idea about all this.
I Thank everybody who helped me.

 

[whs]

thanks guys. Turning Autoplay off is definitely a good idea. And jav, I will have a look at all your links (will keep me busy for the rest of the night - LOL). But things are being written to the systems during the hands-on classes. And I also want to keep things as simple as possible because a lot of the members are plain beginners and could not deal with fancy setups - else i would have suggested a sandbox for the hands-on. The setup must be transparent to them.

 

[D3ftOn3Z]

You could try using these to remove/disable autorun.inf viruses from spreading to your pc.It's freeware...Hope this helps you.

Panda USB and AutoRun Vaccine | Panda Research Blog

http://oldmcdonald.wordpress.com/

 

[brady]

non-admin accounts