Avecto Releases Privilege Guard 2.5 and Extends Windows 7 UAC Capabilities

Avecto Ltd, the leader in Windows privilege management, today announced the release of Privilege Guard 2.5, which extends its application privilege management solution to integrate more closely with User Account Control (UAC).

"On Windows 7 and Vista platforms, Privilege Guard may be configured to intercept and replace UAC consent dialogs with Privilege Guard's policy driven elevation, auditing and messaging capabilities," said Mark Austin, CTO at Avecto. "The ability to customize the end user message is critical to reducing the help desk calls that are often generated by inappropriate UAC prompts, which simply confuse the end user in most situations".

In addition to tighter UAC integration, Privilege Guard 2.5 introduces many new features, including end user messaging, application control and custom tokens.

The end user messaging capability enables fully customizable prompts to be displayed to the user, including multi-lingual support and the option to force the user to provide a reason or re-authenticate before an application is launched or elevated.

With the introduction of application control in Privilege Guard, it is now possible to use a single solution to control which applications run, and the privileges assigned to those applications. For blocked applications, users may be provided with the option to email a request to run an application.

Custom tokens allow application privileges to be locked down more precisely, by granting an application only the privileges it requires to function under a standard user account. In addition to providing a more granular least privilege approach, custom tokens may also be used to restrict access to resources for particular applications.

By integrating closely with Active Directory Group Policy, Privilege Guard delivers a centralized policy driven solution, which requires no additional backend infrastructure. All users log on with a standard user account, and Privilege Guard elevates the rights of individual applications based on policy settings. With Privilege Guard it is no longer necessary to give users local admin rights on desktops or servers, leading to increased security and reduced support costs.

Privilege Guard is available on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. It is also supported on Windows server operating systems.

To find out about the other new features in Privilege Guard 2.5 and to download an evaluation, register at www.avecto.com/download.