Use of Sandboxie in Schools as an alternative to Virtual Machines

[db2995]

Good Afternoon,

I currently work in a small to medium sized secondary school. The situation that we have in place at the moment is that we currently don't have any Software Restriction Policies or AppLocker rules in place.

The potential route that we're heading down is that we would like to implement AppLocker rules across our domain but not at the expense of our Computer Science curriculum. Our Head of Department has previously used a Virtual Machine whilst working in another establishment and strongly disapproves of them as they don't have the same performance as a normal desktop environment and are also cumbersome and somewhat time consuming.

The question I'm asking in this Email is how could Sandboxie allow the Computer Science curriculum to be safely and securely delivered? The requirements we have are as follows but not limited to:

- Run only specified programs in Sandboxie
- No settings to be changed by students and no access to Sandboxie interface
- Can't access any network resources (via UNC or mapped drives) other than their own work areas
- Can only run executables related to their project but not any associated to our systems or any which can gain information about our network.

The software we use consists of Visual Studio 2013, Notepad++ and Python.

Sorry if it is a bit long winded!

All the best
Davey

[Barb@Invincea]

Hello db2995,

Thanks for your interest in our product. Please keep in mind that Sandboxie is not a VM or Application Control software, but an isolation tool that allows you to run applications inside of it without modifying your host.
Please refer to:
https://www.sandboxie.com/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
You can test Sandboxie for free to see if the programs you want to run work fine inside the Sandbox and behave as expected. Y
https://www.sandboxie.com/DownloadSandboxie

If you want to restrict Sandboxie (internet access, applications that can run inside the Sandbox, etc), please have a look at this section:
https://www.sandboxie.com/RestrictionsSettings

We have some users that run Sandboxie along with Applocker policies, please find examples + settings required in the topic below:
viewtopic.php?p=124147#p124147

Regarding not allowing users to make changes, please have a look at this entry:
https://www.sandboxie.com/EditAdminOnly

If you successfully test Sandboxie and want to try the paid features, the ForceFolders /Process features allow you to force certain programs / files to run inside Sandboxie:
https://www.sandboxie.com/ProgramStartSettings#folder
https://www.sandboxie.com/ProgramStartSettings#program

Regards,
Barb.-