Viewfinity Privilege Management earned high marks in an independent product review by Wayne Rash, President and Analyst, of Wayne Rash & Associates. 

 “The single greatest security threat to most enterprises is the lack of control over administrative rights on client computers. By allowing employees administrative rights, you are opening the door to worms, Trojans and a host of other security problems. The security improvements in Windows 7 and third party privilege management solutions make the OS refresh the perfect time to remove rights. However, this issue is so critical that the removal of administrative privileges should be made as soon as possible,” says Wayne Rash, president and principal analyst of Wayne Rash & Associates.”

Here are some highlights of the Viewfinity review:

• “You can also use the Policy feature to block applications, so if a user has a peer to peer movie downloading package already installed, for example, you can prevent it from operating.

• “You can implement Viewfinity on any network using Windows machines, regardless of whether it Active Directory is in place."

• “With Windows 7, users are presented with a message from the User Account Control system when they attempt to invoke a function that requires administrative rights.” “Because Viewfinity is controlling the administrative rights, you can also control the UAC message.” 

 Click the picture to read the entire review:

Stop by next Friday for Tip #4 

Four-part Webcast Series to Focus on Least Privilege Management as a Fundamental Layer of IT Security Protection

The first webinar in the series, "Top 10 tips for Removing Administrator Rights," will be held on Thursday January 26, 2012 at 11 a.m. Pacific / 2 p.m. ET.   This webcast will prevent tips for removing administrator rights on endpoints without impacting user productivity.  The tips will be followed by an actual use case presentation by Monique Sendze, associate director of Information Technology for Douglas County (State), who will share the proactive steps they have taken to secure their computers by removing admin rights and managing privileges for standard users via automated policies.

To register for this webinar, visit the registration page 

Viewfinity recommendations and action items based upon the above:

Question #1:

If you’re among the IT Administrators who are looking to change this dynamic, we have a free tool that allows you to discover user accounts and groups that are members of the local “Administrators” built-in user group on computers in your Windows domain and take action, if needed, by removing the users or suspicious groups from the Administrators group.

Question #2:

For all who answered NO, you may want to consider reviewing our recorded webcast of a live demo session that demonstrates Viewfinity’s end-to-end approach that automates the analysis that silently discovers applications requiring administrative rights, prepare your environment and create policies to control User Permissions/Privilege Escalation for users who are running applications or desktop functions that require elevated privileges.

View webcast recording:  Getting Started: Removing Administrator Rights & Setting up Policies to Elevate Privileges for Standard Users

Viewfinity 3.6 – GA July 25, 2011

Viewfinity’s End-to-End Non-Disruptive Move to Least Privileges process encompasses the following automated steps:

1. Discovers user accounts and groups that are members of the local “Administrators” built-in user group on computers in your Windows domain.
2. Silently discovers applications requiring administrative rights prior to revoking privileges.
3. Provides “Readiness Statistics” based on end user activity that is collected over a period of time to ensure all events requiring administrator rights are captured.
4. Once the collection and analysis has completed, policies to elevate privileges are automatically created and prepared in advance so that when administrative rights are removed, the policies are in place to ensure a non-disruptive move to least privileges.
5. Supports future needs, exceptions and maintenance. Viewfinity:

• Collects user requests with corresponding business justification
• Provides a policy authorization workflow management & approval process

6.     Ongoing auditing and reporting for compliance validation

For a detailed description on all feature updates and enhancements for this release, please review our 3.6 Release Notes.

Viewfinity is excited to announce the new enhancements made to the Local Admin Discovery Tool.  Many users have downloaded and utilized the tool and Viewfinity is listening…

Based upon feedback from users, we’ve recently made several enhancements to the Viewfinity Local Admin Discovery Tool. This is a great free tool for discovering user accounts that have local administrative rights.   The list of the enhancements and fixes includes:

1.     Fixed special symbols in names.

2.     Support for a very large number of OU’s.

3.     Ability to save a list of computers at the end of a session so it can be used in the next session.

4.     Ability to export list of computers to an external file. 

 5.     Added a new pane to the wizard following the Credentials pane. There are 3 options on this page: Start new AD discovery, use the computers saved in the last session, or import a list of computers from an external text file.

6.     Save color-coded users/groups at the end of the session and automatically use it in the next session.  The menu item “Reset Colors to Default” is always available.

 7.     Added a new report to “organize by Computers” – this is in addition to the report we currently have which organizes by Users/Groups.

8.     Solved the problem with the links in the exported Excel file.

It’s that time again- Microsoft releasing patch updates or better known as Patch Tuesday or maybe even Black Tuesday. 

Microsoft released 2 Security bulletins today for May’s patch updates, compared to 17 security bulletins in April.  Nonetheless, vulnerabilities that are caused by regular Windows, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Office patch updates can expose a desktop to harmful malware and other IT threats. These threats can cause major headaches for IT administrator but these headaches can be reduced when a user does not have admin rights on the desktop.  Viewfinity research shows that these vulnerabilities are mitigated when users are running without admin rights but it doesn’t stop here.  Companies must bridge the gap between desktop lockdown and end user productivity and this is why many companies are using Viewfinity’s Privilege Management solution.  This is the only reliable and well sought after solution that balances the rigidity of locking down end points with the needs of user customization. It provides IT security professionals with a method for securing the end-point by elevating privileges for an application or process, or for desktop functions, rather than providing total administrative privileges. Systems are less at risk without sacrificing user productivity or increasing support call volume. 

You can read the full analysis here. 

Take the first step in mitigating the risk of Black Tuesday’s vulnerabilities by detecting which users have admin rights on the Windows domain with Viewfinity’s complimentary Local Admin Discovery Tool.  This tool will allow IT admins to discover and remove users with admin rights that should not have them. 

After removing the admin rights, see how easy it is to bridge the gap between desktop lockdown and managing policies and elevating privileges on the fly with a free evaluation of our product.

During Microsoft Patch Tuesdays, there are numerous vulnerabilities involved as outlined in the security bulletin that Microsoft issues during the patch releases.  Firewalls, web filters, anti-spam, NAC, and anti-virus solutions do help to protect against IT security threats and the more layers of security protection a company adds, the more they reduce the risk of a costly and embarrassing IT security breach.  Another very effective method for mitigating vulnerabilities is for companies to remove administrator rights from users.   

“A locked down endpoint is less susceptible to malware that exploits the vulnerabilities that are highlighted every month on Patch Tuesday,” said Dwain Kinghorn, Partner at SageCreek Partners and author of the white paper. 

A review of all the software updates that Microsoft released in 2010 demonstrates that month after month there are vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Office that are mitigated when the user is not running with administrator privileges, specifically:  

• 9 months in which there was at least one update for Microsoft Windows that addressed issues that were less significant when users didn’t have administrative rights
• 7 months in which there was at least one update for Internet Explorer that addressed issues that were less significant when users didn’t have administrative rights
• 11 months in which there were updates for Microsoft Office that addressed issues that were less impacted when users didn’t have administrative rights

Click here to download the full analysis. 

Viewfinity’s Privilege Management balances the rigidity of locking down end points with the needs of user customization. It provides IT security professionals with a method for further securing the end-point by elevating privileges at the application level, or for desktop functions, rather than providing total administrative privileges. Systems are less at risk without sacrificing user productivity or increasing support call volume.

Do you know who has administrator rights on your Windows domain?  If you aren’t sure then download our Local Admin Discovery tool to find out. This tool is provided at no cost to your organization. After the analysis is run, IT Administrators can take action, if needed, by removing the users or suspicious groups from the Administrators group.