Industry Leaders Select Avecto to Achieve Least Privilege for Microsoft Windows Systems

Avecto, the leader in Windows privilege management, today revealed details of two key customers using Privilege Guard to reduce management costs and improve security. Demonstrating the benefits that Avecto provides to enterprises, these organizations are leveraging Privilege Guard to simplify Windows desktop migrations and overcome diverse user requirements and problem applications to improve desktop security.

Supporting Desktop Upgrade and Future-Proofing Windows 7 Roll-out

Shop Direct Group is the UK's leading online and home shopping retailer, with an estimated five million customers and annual sales of around £1.7 billion. Shop Direct's IT team embarked on a major multi-year project to migrate all of its desktops from Windows 2000 to Windows Vista, with a medium-term plan to transition to Windows 7. As part of this initiative, Shop Direct determined that removing admin rights from Windows users using Privilege Guard would catapult their business forward to achieving a more effective and efficient desktop structure.

The ultimate objective is to migrate to Windows 7 and knowing Privilege Guard supports the latest Windows desktop operating system was very reassuring for them. "The overall IT infrastructure of our business is now future-proofed," says Shop Direct. As a result of removing admin rights, the group is already seeing positive changes as staff embrace the new desktop, which is expected to help grow the business further. The IT team is also better able to solve desktop user problems quickly and easily and the manageability of their remote users has improved substantially.

Addressing Diverse User Requirements and Problem Applications to Enable Least Privilege

Oxford University Press (OUP) is the largest university press in the world. They recognized that because of the large number of users who required elevated permissions to perform specific tasks, user admin rights posed a real risk to their business as it left their desktops vulnerable to malware and unauthorized configuration changes.

OUP was updating desktop operating systems from Windows XP to Vista and are now transitioning to Windows 7. As part of this process, OUP realized that it could mitigate security vulnerabilities and improve overall desktop management by removing admin rights from all users with Privilege Guard.

"Implementing the Privilege Guard solution was seamless and completely transparent and has given my team a greater degree of control over our desktop users," said Gavin Wilson, senior support analyst at OUP. "Avecto have provided us with excellent support, not just for the product, but they have gone beyond implementation and given us some of the best advice we have ever experienced. We are confident we made the right decision in choosing them to help roll out our least privilege strategy."

OUP efficiently completed the strategic task of reducing malware threats to its business by leveraging Privilege Guard to implement a policy of least privilege. As a result, the organization has now streamlined desktop infrastructure support and improved the overall end-user experience.

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"Organizations across industries are recognizing the benefits of enterprise privilege management on their Windows systems," said Tony Bolland, CEO of Avecto. "Avecto provides these businesses with the solution they need to empower their Windows desktop and server users to perform their job functions without compromising the integrity and security of the systems. We are committed to helping organizations worldwide realize the value of least privilege through the industry's most comprehensive solution."