Skip to main content

Some frequently asked questions about locking down managed chromebooks

There a number of questions surrounding the management of ChromeOS devices in schools that crop up on a fairly frequent basis. So I thought I'd answer a few of the most common ones here that are not that obvious unless you are in the know.

To do the following, you must have device management licences. Some of these tricks can be achieved using other means through third party add ons - but this is all done with just device management.

Prevent non domain users logging on

In the admin console go to 'Device Management', 'Chrome', 'Device Settings'


Use the above policy to restrict who can sign-in to your devices. Wildcards are allowed as in the example above. This does not stop users signing into a non-domain account once signed into the device.

Prevent users from signing into private accounts or adding accounts once signed in.

In the admin console go to 'Device Management', 'Chrome', 'User Settings'


Use this policy to block two url's:
https://accounts.google.com/AccountChooser
https://accounts.google.com/AddSession

Prevent users from editing any settings at all

Use the same policy as above, but block chrome://settings-frame
This will prevent users from changing network settings, language or any other settings.
This won't prevent them from connecting to other networks - but it does stop them changing the network settings.

If you don't want to go that far and you want to prevent users from attempting to use alternative DNS servers (e.g. Google DNS), then block port 53 both UDP and TCP on your outbound firewall. Which will mean if they switch from your default DNS server (supplied by DHCP), they won't get anything. Just be aware, how this behaves, depends on how your network is configured.

There are policies in the offing to control language settings that will hopefully be available in the next few releases of ChromeOS.

These policies will need applying to appropriate sub-OU's only - typically students. Don't apply them to super-admin accounts!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Delete a specific email using GAM

If a user send an inappropriate email to a loads of people or get stung by some sort of email exploit you can quickly delete the email from all of the recipients using a GAM command. Step 1 - get the email header Go into Google Vault and search for the offending user or someone known to have got the message. Click show details and grab the email ID. This will be a long string of characters followed by @mail.gmail.com Step 2 - find out who has the email Go into Google Vault and find the original message sent by the offending user. Look at the details to see who got it. Copy the list and dump it into a spreadsheet. Clean up to just a list of emails with a column header 'mail'. Save as a csv file. Step 3 - delete messages with GAM Put your CSV file in your GAM folder - this e.g. assumes its called mail.csv Run: gam csv mail.csv gam user ~mail delete messages query rfc822msgid: MESSAGEIDHERE doit The alternative nuke option is: gam all users delete messages query rf
Post a Comment
Read more

Adding subdomains to G Suite

This is how I add subdomains (so basically new schools) to out G suite setup. I've got these steps documented on a scruffy set of notes that I've now got in Keep - so time to document them - for myself as much as anyone else! Steps in order (roughly) Add the new domain Verify the new domain Add MX records to hosting Add SPF record for Google to hosting Turn on email authentication Add DMARC record to hosting Setup custom Directory and restrict students OU to this. Create an admin quarantine for the domain. Configure SPAM setting for the domain. Turn on and off services as appropriate. Map a blank Google Site to the naked domain - if required. Setup some basic groups - allstaff, allusers (for directory) and students with appropriate permissions. Deploy custom wallpapers. So the steps in a bit of detail: Add the new domain & Verify ownership Click on Domains in the admin console: Add/remove domains followed by "add a domain" At this
Post a Comment
Read more

My favorite GAM commands - well a few of them at least!

Where would be without GAM? Paying for expensive syncing tools or doing tedious manual tasks in the admin console. GAM can automate most things you might want to do in G Suite. So these are a few of my favourite commands - one I use either as part of a batch file - or just standalone. There are loads more - but these are ones that are used daily. Classroom Create a spreadsheet of all your domains classes -  gam print courses todrive Create a spreadsheet of a teacher's classes:  gam print courses teacher fred@mydomain.com todrive Bulk create classes: gam csv classes.csv gam create course alias ~alias name ~alias section ~subject teacher ~teacher status ACTIVE where classes.csv is a list of classes you want to make. Add teachers: gam csv teachers.csv gam course ~alias add teacher ~teacher Add students: gam csv students.csv gam course ~alias add teacher ~student Sync Students (in this example to a group - but could be an ou/csv file) gam csv groups.csv gam course ~g
Post a Comment
Read more