Can downloads be made password protected?

[EmEd1984]

Fairly straightforward question, does anyone know of a way we can arrange for our networked computers in the office to prompt for a password everytime a download is requested?

We don't want to block ALL downloads, just the ones we don't authorise.

TIA x

[DanAB]

are these downloads from the internet or downloads from a network storage device ?

[EmEd1984]

internet

[ChuckFickens]

Of the top of my head I would say no... not unless you either put a proxy server in that requires a password, but then users would need to enter a password to even access the web or invest in a thrid party piece of software that may do the trick (but I don't know of any)

The problem is that downloads normally take place over port 80 which is the normal HTTP port for web traffic so stopping downloads would stop normal web traffic.

You can setup the user accounts to be restricted accounts so that the users can't actually install any software. you can also introduce an acceptable use policy for computer use stating that downloads of any sort are not allowed without authorisation. (BTW you should have a AUP in place for other reasons too)

[DanAB]

if there is any traffic monitoring equipment installed then you could possibly track 'heavy' download usage to a specific computer/person. then you can query them to find out what has been downloaded and if that matches up with the bandwidth being used.

if this is a work query then they should not be downloading for personal use.

[EmEd1984]

DanAB, i completely and utterly agree!

it's an awkward situation I won't bore you with too much but the jist is that the member of staff is family who we've told / asked numerous times to stop over the years and she hasn't, so we have no choice but to prevent it from happening instead - so when she tries again and it won't work or she is prompted for the password, she'll have to stop. Unfortunately, pulling her up about it doesn't do too much so it literally needs to be some sort of block on certain actions.

We have a limited bandwidth per month that these downloads (and live streaming?) are using up which means for the rest of the month until the bandwidth resets all the computers on the network run incredibly slow.

[ChuckFickens]

you can block downloads in the IE security setting BTW... it's not what you originally asked because it won't prompt for a password (and if they have another browser they can simply use that... but uninstall any other browsers and they won't be able to download it at least :))

click tools then options then click on the security tab and select internet, then click custom level and scroll down the list of options until you see file download and put a tick in dissable and click ok.

if they are not computer savvy then that will probably be enough... if they are download TweakUI from microsoft (google it) and you can use that to diaable the security tab in the IE options so they can't re-enable downloads

It's not an ideal answer, and will be a bit of a pain if you ever do need to download anything, but it will stop them from downloading.

[beso]

Install a proxy. If you are pretty tech savy Squid which runs on Linux is the go.

For Windows there is FreeProxy
http://www.handcraftedsoftware.org/

If you don't have a dedicated server to use as the proxy you can configure the miscreant's browser to access the internet through one of the other computers with FreeProxy installed.

[EmEd1984]

Chuckfickens, I found that website too! I've done that as well, so we'll see.

Thank you to everyone for their suggestions, I'll look into them all :)