Patent ID: 8239608

Claim:
A method comprising: logging in, by a computer system, a user account of a host operating system (OS) running on the computer system, wherein the user account is associated with a secure computing environment; and upon logging in the user account, providing, by the computer system, the secure computing environment by: preventing, based on a configuration of the user account, execution of one or more selected programs by the host OS that are unrelated to virtualization software running on the computer system; disabling, based on the configuration of the user account, one or more selected user interface features of the host OS that allow access to files or programs resident on the computer system; automatically launching a first virtual machine via the virtualization software; and redirecting input received from a user of the user account to the virtualization software, wherein the virtualization software is configured to pass a portion of the input to the first virtual machine, and wherein the redirecting causes the input to be directed solely to the virtualization software, such that the input is not acted upon by programs of the host OS or the host OS itself for any purpose other than performing the redirecting.