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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!

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