Program helps admins control user privileges in Windows

Program helps admins control user privileges in Windows

Serdar Yegulalp, Contributor
A common complaint about the way Microsoft Windows handles privileges and security is that it still remains somewhat ungranular and clumsy. For instance, if you put a user into a reduced-privilege context, it's hard to selectively allow them elevated privileges without changing their group memberships. If they need to run one application (or a set of apps) that requires admin rights, the administrator needs to contrive a way to allow them to run those programs with elevated privileges.

Although mechanisms exist for doing this in Windows, they are close-ended: You can either do something or you can't. It's difficult to carve out exceptions or grant one-time allowances for something.

One of the best third-party solutions to this problem is

    Requires Free Membership to View

    Login

    By submitting your registration information to SearchNetworking.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchNetworking.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

Winternals Protection Manager. This application allows an administrator to define much more precise and controlled parameters for how users and groups of users can (or can't) do things with applications.

Each program can be given one of four levels of control: deny, run as limited user, run as administrator or allow normally. The "deny" function doesn't rely on the type of blacklisting/application-image hashing technique used by Group Policy; if told to do so, it will block anything not specifically authorized by the administrator. (You can use hashes, filenames, owners or other methods to define allowed files.) This approach offers an auxiliary benefit: Since any application that isn't specifically allowed can be restricted, viruses and spyware have that much more difficulty getting a toehold.

More on this topic

Browse network engineering tips

Tool helps administrators run applications with limited user privileges

Another key feature that isn't supported in Windows by default is the ability to get "run-time requests for permission." A user can attempt to launch an application, and if it's denied, they can petition an administrator to grant them the right to do so, immediately, without having their security policy rewritten. Admins can also "harvest" running applications from systems to see what people are using, and then build their restriction policies from that information. That way they can use real-time data and not guesswork or manually tabulated lists to get a handle on things.

A free evaluation version of the product, which runs totally unrestricted for 30 days, is available. Pricing varies based on the number of seats and servers needed, but a sample quoted price for one server and 25 workstations is $1100.

About the author: Serdar Yegulalp is editor of the Windows Power Users Newsletter. Check it out for the latest advice and musings on the world of Windows network administrators.

This tip originally appeared on SearchWinSystems.com

This was first published in June 2006

Disclaimer: Our Tips Exchange is a forum for you to share technical advice and expertise with your peers and to learn from other enterprise IT professionals. TechTarget provides the infrastructure to facilitate this sharing of information. However, we cannot guarantee the accuracy or validity of the material submitted. You agree that your use of the Ask The Expert services and your reliance on any questions, answers, information or other materials received through this Web site is at your own risk.

Back to top