Last week we caught up with Wayne Rash, Senior Analyst for eWeek Labs, and chatted with him about his article related to basic security measures that companies fail to take, High-Profile Companies Fail to Take Even Basic Security Measures, causing sensitive information to be compromised. Wayne’s outline should be followed by every company, large or small.  We agree with the seven basic security measures outlined by Wayne and most strongly support the #2 security measure:

Employees should never be given administrative access to their computers. They should never be allowed to install software, including updates and applications, on their computers. Ever.

We couldn’t agree more.  Companies shouldn’t hesitate to remove administrator rights from end users.  Nor should this protective measure cause an increase in support calls. With the help of a third party solution like Viewfinity Privilege Management, end user productivity does not have to be sacrificed when administrator rights are removed.  Users are given the necessary privileges to access the applications needed to perform their daily job functions, as well as a mechanism for requesting elevated privileges when they might have a situation that requires administrative permissions.  But permissions are granted to the application, not the user, thus the endpoint is still secured.

Thanks Wayne for raising the importance of this preventative measure.

Get the latest news on IT by following Wayne Rash on Twitter: @wrash