Transparent or Clear Screen Lock or Screensaver

[MartyGold]

I work for a pharmaceutical company and was given the mandate to strengthen the security of the systems on the production floor. These computers display the status of various processes. We want this information to remain visible to everyone but now want to control who can actually use the system. When someone does login/unlock the system we need to audit that event.

So far the only way I have found is using a third party app called Transparent Screen Lock (Link to Transparent Screen Lock). This is pretty much a transparent screensaver that you can configure to let users unlock using their own domain account credentials.

I have done some testing with this product – it seems to work as advertised and has pretty much all the options you would expect. I like the fact that users can use their own domain passwords but worry about that at the same time. My first question is: When evaluating such a product, what are the things I should be looking for? What should I be testing for?

Anyone with any experience in the pharmaceutical industry knows that security is a very big concern so I am pretty apprehensive about implementing such a product. For this reason I would like to open a discussion about my problem (i.e. securing a PC leaving the screen visible) as well as this possible solution. I will open the discussion with a number of questions.

What are my options? Does anyone have any other solutions? (Please don’t suggest locking the PC in a glass cabinet – anyone who has tried that will tell you that causes more problems than it solves)

How ‘secure’ is such a product”?

Does anyone have any experience with Transparent Screen Lock?

Has anyone encountered/solved the same problem?

Any feedback, suggestions, options, etc. would be most welcome.

mArty