Top 5 Reasons Why Users Need Administrator Rights

In the last blog article we discussed the top 5 reasons why users want administrator privileges. In this article we will discuss the top 5 reasons why a user actually NEEDS administrator rights. Here are the top 5 reasons:

1. System Utilities: many of the control panel applications require administrator rights including driver installation, disk defragmenter, and backing up the.
2. System Settings: changing system settings such as the date\time or network configuration settings require administrator privileges.
3. Software Installation: software that tries to install into the Program Files or Windows directory needs administrator rights to do so.
4. Software Updates: application updaters require administrator rights in order to make changes to the applications in the Program Files directory. This includes updaters for Adobe, Java, and iTunes.
5. Legacy or Poorly Coded Software:  some applications simply require administrator rights to run normally.

The reasons listed above may or may not be good reasons for why users need administrator rights; however, those reasons usually lead to users being granted administrator rights and granting those rights create a huge threat to IT security as well as increased manageability costs. Most companies are left in a bind: do they remove administrator rights and limit the productivity of their employees or do they let their users keep admin privileges?

Most companies choose to let their users keep administrator privileges because they can’t afford to hinder employee productivity, thus gambling their IT security. What if there was another option that would enable system utilities, options, installers, updaters, and legacy applications to run with admin privileges AND enforce IT security by removing administrator rights from users? Well there is. Application and user privilege management enables companies to remove administrator rights from users while also adding administrator rights to applications that need them to run normally.

Arellia Application Control Solution and Local Security Solution assist businesses concerned with security by protect their assets from security threats, mitigate zero-day vulnerabilities, control system stability, and enforce software compliance by using application and user privilege management capabilities.