Avecto Privilege Guard Extends User Account Control for the Enterprise

Avecto, the leader in Windows privilege management, today announced the launch of Privilege Guard 2.7, which enhances its existing User Account Control (UAC) integration to deal with applications that trigger dynamic elevation.

"User Account Control is an important security feature within Windows 7, but it's reliance on a local administrator account makes it unsuitable for many corporate environments," says Mark Austin, CTO at Avecto. "With Privilege Guard 2.7, we have extended our UAC integration to allow dynamic UAC prompts to be replaced with a flexible approach that is more suitable for corporate environments, which leads to an improved user experience and reduced help desk calls."

The ability for Privilege Guard to deal with individual applications that trigger UAC, leads to a highly configurable solution. Privilege Guard can suppress inappropriate UAC prompts or replace them with corporate aligned prompts and error messages, as defined by central policy.

For advanced users, it may be appropriate to simply replace UAC prompts with a corporate solution that provides clear end user communication and a full audit trail. In a more locked down scenario, UAC prompts often lead to end user confusion and Privilege Guard can be configured to replace inappropriate UAC prompts with meaningful error messages.

Privilege Guard's end user messaging capability is comprehensive and includes full multi-lingual support and highly customizable messages. The ability to add corporate banners gives it a distinct feel that clearly differentiates it from UAC. Users can also be asked to provide reasons for their actions or request access to applications that they have been prohibited from running.

The Privilege Guard solution provides organizations with a fully auditable environment, where users log on with standard user accounts, and privileges are only assigned to the applications that actually require them, based on policy settings. The dynamic UAC integration allows advanced policies to be configured that can elevate individual applications at the point they request to be re-launched with administrator privileges.

Privilege Guard is integrated with Active Directory Group Policy and can be deployed without any additional backend infrastructure and provides an enterprise class approach to least privilege Windows management.

Privilege Guard 2.7 will be officially released on April 4th, 2011.

Update: Privilege Guard is now Defendpoint

Privilege Guard has now evolved into the new security suite, Defendpoint, which encompasses Privilege Management, Application Control and Sandboxing. For more information, please visit www.avecto.com/defendpoint.