Importance

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Abstract

A security system to prevent un-authorized access to the hard drive of a personal computer system. The security system consists of a plug-in expansion card containing a program on an EPROM, a device driver program which requests the password for access, and other programs to establish the valid passwords for the security system, provide an audit trail of computer access, and other functions. The program on the EPROM disables the floppy drives until a valid password has been entered, forcing the booting process to be controlled and forcing the computer to boot off of the hard drive and request a password via the device driver. A skilled programmer, even with a complete knowledge of the security system's details of operation, can not write a program which can be booted off of a diskette in order to bypass the security system. The passwords and user IDs for the security system are stored on the hard drive of the computer inside the device driver program. The elimination of the need to provide any random access memory, EEROM or other non-volatile memory in which to store the passwords contributes to the low manufacturing cost for the security system.

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First Claim