You ever say this to yourself? Sure, we all have at one point or another; and that's understandable. Between the stress we sometimes feel at work and home, it's easy to throw your hands up and think, this is just the way it is, these are the problems I have to deal with.
But think about it, where are those problems at work coming from? Why are you constantly putting out fires and fixing all the things that your users, 'didn't do but it broke anyway'? I bet most of those issues stem from unmanged user rights. In other words, your user's permissions are based on what THEY say they need, not what you know is best for the company, but it's just easier on everyone, (except you) to let it be.
But what if you could allow your users just the rights of a Windows Standard User, but still allow the apps they need to run smoothly? You can and BeyondTrust can help you do it. Wouldn't you rather spend your time moving forward on projects rather than wasting your time on break/fix issues and reimaging machines because yet another virus got through.
I remember a number of years ago I sent an email out to a group of about 70 people warning them about the then latest and greatest virus running wild. I explained exactly what the email would look like coming in and told them in no uncertain terms, not to open the attachment; They're not really pictures of a certain female tennis player. Well, two people opened it. One of the guys said it looked like the email came from his wife. Now Folks...I don't know about you, but my wife doesn't spend her days sending me pictures of other women. As Bill Engvall would say, "Here's your sign". The point is, our users are busy too, and they don't always realize the consequences of their actions as it relates to IT security. We do. We're trained, sometimes unwillingly what can and does go wrong when people accidentally or deliberately misuse privileges.
BeyondTrust's PowerBroker Windows Tool is designed to make life easier. With it you can run an environment of standard users, but elevate just the applications you approve as a businesss need or at least the apps you know won't cause an early ulcer. The software's managment is done within a Group Policy Editor, something you already use in your environment today. And finding out what sort of policies are needed is easy, you just tell PowerBroker Windows to build them for you. Frank in accounting is running an application that needs elevated rights...Just Select - Paste, Frank can run that app. There's an app you don't want running in your enterprise, no problem, just set the rule to prohibit it, and it can't run.
If our users can't get themselves into trouble and the viruses can't infect the computers who knows, maybe someday we can take a full one-hour lunch break; Because as I've been informed, heating up Ramen, a Hot Pocket and drinking a Code Red does not constitute a proper soup and sandwhich meal.
Scott Lang, Sr. Director, Product Marketing at BeyondTrust
Scott Lang has nearly 20 years of experience in technology product marketing, currently guiding the product marketing strategy for BeyondTrust’s privileged account management solutions and vulnerability management solutions. Prior to joining BeyondTrust, Scott was director of security solution marketing at Dell, formerly Quest Software, where he was responsible for global security campaigns, product marketing for identity and access management and Windows server management.