Our Announcements
BeyondTrust Announces Privilege Manager Support for Microsoft Windows 7
Addresses Shortcomings of User Account Control to Effectively Eliminate Admin Rights Enterprise-Wide; Advances Privileged Access Lifecycle Management for New Operating System
Agoura Hills, Calif. — October 19, 2009 - BeyondTrust, the leading provider of Privileged Access Lifecycle Management solutions, today announced BeyondTrust Privilege Manager support for Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system. BeyondTrust Privilege Manager will immediately address the least privilege management shortcomings of Windows 7 to make it even easier for enterprises to eliminate administrator rights for end-users, and transparently grant administrative privileges to applications that require them.
“Privilege Manager was easily the smartest thing we implemented last year. It has enabled us to remove administrator rights from all users across our multiple offices, virtually eliminate malware on our network and address compliance requirements,” said Ned Cahill, director of IT at Schnabel Engineering. “We plan to deploy Windows 7 as we purchase new hardware, and it’s reassuring to know that BeyondTrust will help us secure desktops running the new operating system and continue to ensure that users will be able to run the applications they need without administrator rights or UAC prompts.”
Available for general release on October 22, Windows 7 brings little relief for enterprises seeking to deploy end-users as standard users, i.e., users without administrator rights. In response to feedback that users were forced to respond to too many prompts in Windows Vista, the new operating system introduces a new approach to User Account Control (UAC), providing a four-position “slider” feature to control how often UAC pop-ups occur. While these changes to Windows 7’s UAC benefit the home user market, enterprises must recognize that the new slider feature can only be applied to users logged in as administrators and may increase security risks. Further, Windows 7 introduces no new features to solve the application compatibility issues experienced by standard users in previous versions of the operating system.
“The most secure configuration option for enterprises that deploy Windows 7 remains running end-users as standard users, with administrator rights removed,” said Eric Voskuil, CTO, BeyondTrust. “However, accomplishing this task will continue to present challenges to organizations as they deploy Windows 7. BeyondTrust Privilege Manager will enable these organizations to efficiently and effectively eliminate administrative rights throughout the enterprise without impacting the ability of users to perform their jobs.”
Eliminating administrator rights is one of the most effective ways for enterprises to meet compliance mandates and reduce vulnerability to attacks by spyware, malware and malicious users. BeyondTrust Privilege Manager will enable organizations to remove administrator rights in Windows 7 – as well as Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008 and 64-bit platforms - and allow end-users to run all approved applications, processes and ActiveX controls.
Privilege Manager is implemented as a Group Policy extension. Organizations running Windows 7 can simply specify the privileges necessary for an application. These privileges will be added to the application process when it is launched, enabling end-users without administrative privileges to run all authorized applications. Privilege Manager will reduce support costs and provide great flexibility for maintaining standardized desktop configurations, such as those recently specified in the Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) mandate.
BeyondTrust Privilege Manager is a key component of BeyondTrust’s suite of Privileged Access Lifecycle Management (PALM) solutions. BeyondTrust’s PALM solutions protect sensitive and confidential data from internal and external threats through management of privilege delegation, user access control, and privileged passwords. PALM enables organizations to more easily comply with regulatory requirements by maintaining stricter access control policies and providing an audit trail of user activity. With BeyondTrust, organizations can simplify enterprise-wide policy enforcement across even the most complex, heterogeneous environments in locations around the world.
Current BeyondTrust Privilege Manager 4.5 users will automatically benefit from Windows 7 support. All other BeyondTrust Privilege Manager customers may upgrade as part of their upgrade assurance program.
About BeyondTrust
Founded in 1985, BeyondTrust is the only provider of Privileged Access Lifecycle Management (PALM) solutions for heterogeneous IT environments. The BeyondTrust suite of products reduces the risks associated with insider sabotage and theft of proprietary data, while documenting accountability to support increasing demands of regulatory compliance required across many industries.
PALM is a technology architecture framework consisting of four continual stages running under a centralized automated platform: access to privileged resources, control of privileged resources, monitoring of actions taken on privileged resources, and remediation to revert changes made on privileged IT resources to a known good state.
More than half of the companies listed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rely on BeyondTrust to secure their enterprises. BeyondTrust customers include eight of the world's 10 largest banks, seven of the world's 10 largest aerospace and defense firms, and six of the 10 largest U.S. pharmaceutical companies, as well as renowned universities. BeyondTrust's customer retention rate is over 90 percent. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, with East Coast offices in Greater Boston as well as Washington DC, and EMEA offices in London, UK. For more information, visit www.beyondtrust.com..
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Dave Bowker or Tiffany Archambault
Schwartz Communications
(781) 684-0770
BeyondTrust@schwartz-pr.com