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I would like to add a permanent title bar at the top of a workstation's Desktop window to indicate a machine's security level (Unclassified, Confidential, etc). I would like to do this as a GPO, if possible, on a windows 2008 r2 domain for both Windows 7 and Windows XP workstations.

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I'd say your best bet is to make however many wallpapers you need for each classification and deploy the wallpapers via GPO. If you're unsure of how to deploy them, instructions can be found here. You could combine this with different themes to easily distinguish between them.

If you want to make a permanent title bar on top of everything, you'd probably have to write a custom explorer.exe replacement.

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  • Definitely don't feel like writing a custom explorer.exe. I will look into the wallpaper deployment idea. Thanks!
    – Jason Bard
    Oct 28, 2011 at 13:11
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The background image idea from @MarkM is a good one.

If you want something which is more constantly on screen you can also look into using a custom color scheme for your workstations. I've used custom colors to indicate production / dev / etc on my servers on and off. It shouldn't be too hard to set up a GPO to do the same for your workstations.

EDIT - Setting the active window title bar color worked well in my environment.

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  • I like this idea. It conveys the level of classification without actually coming out and saying it. I will try it out to see how it looks. Thanks!
    – Jason Bard
    Oct 28, 2011 at 13:13
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You can do this by creating an application desktop toolbar (aka appbar) of your banner. You can either write your own program to do this with SHAppBarMessage and such, or use an existing one like Microsoft NetBanner or Cyber Intel Classification Banner. Microsoft NetBanner definitely supports configuration through GPOs; I'm not sure if Cyber Intel Classification Banner does.

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EDIT"CYBER INTEL CLASSIFICATION BANNER" The Cyber Intel Classification Banner (CICB) is also known as “Classification Banner”, “The Computer Banner”, “Army Unclassified Banner”, “Banner Computer Program”, “Controlled Unclassified Information Banner”, “CUI Banner”, “Computer Information Banner”, “Information Banner”, “DoD Banner”, “Unclassified Green Banner”, “Unclassified Banner”, “USG Banner”, “CUI Banner”, etc. The Cyber Intel Classification Banner is software that will display and mark sensitive/classified output across computer screens when required. This is the perfect solution similar to the NetBanner but with many useful extended features for the Windows and Linux platforms.

The Cyber Intel Classification Banner can help the individual, organization, or government to label and display digital sensitive materials in a graphical session over the computer screen. This software has been tested on various graphical environments such as Microsoft Windows 7 ~ 11, and Ubuntu LTS 18.04+. The Cyber Intel Classification Banner also allows the customer to customize the classification text content, text color, and banner colors for each Windows environment separately. The Cyber Intel Classification Banner can be installed on Physical Computers (PCs) or Virtual Machines (VMs).

This banner is free if you are a non-profit organization.

https://www.cyberintelsystems.com/classification-banner

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