Neil MacDonald’s, VP & Gartner Fellow, recent blog article “The Single Most Important Way to Improve Endpoint Security” launches with a powerful lead-in sentence: “Run more of your Windows users without administrator rights.” Read the full blog to learn more about Neil’s use case and why companies should “make this your goal for 2012.”
Viewfinity couldn’t agree more. Users running with administrator rights aid the spread of malware and viruses. Without administrator rights, users are not allowed to download or install unapproved applications, helping to stop a high percentage of malware and security breaches. In one of Neil’s previous blog, Even With Windows 7, Privilege Management Tools May be Needed, he found that “Many clients have reached the conclusion that a third party privilege management tool will be required to help with the removal of administrator rights – at least for some percentage of their users.”
Implementing least privileges adds a solid layer of defense for desktop environments, further protecting against malware and Advanced Persistent Threats. However, a project of this undertaking requires extensive analysis to determine user needs and prepare the environment. Viewfinity privilege management enables a non-disruptive, automated method for moving to a least privileges environment. This is done through an automated, end-to-end process that helps prepares enterprises for privilege elevation needs before removing administrator rights. For a glimpse of one part of this process, have a quick look at our Local Admin Rights Discovery dashboard. This is a graphical “readiness indicator” of where an organization stands in terms of determining the optimal point in which they are prepared to remove administrator rights. Based on actual end user activity, we monitor which applications, processes, and administrative actions will require administrative and automatically create policies to elevate privileges so that when administrative rights are removed, policies are place to ensure a non-disruptive move to least privileges.