Yeah. You read that right. Nine of out 10 critical bugs reported by Microsoft last year could have been made moot, or at least made less dangerous, if people ran Windows without administrative rights.
And yet, people insist that “we can’t lock down your desktops because your end users would never stand for it.”
<taken from the article below>
The vast majority of critical Microsoft vulnerabilities — 92% of them — could have been mitigated by stripping users of administrative rights, said John Moyer, the CEO of BeyondTrust. "This speaks to what enterprises should be doing," Moyer said. "Clearly, eliminating administrative rights can close the window of opportunity of attack."
Of the 154 bugs published and patched by Microsoft in 2008, critical or not, 69% would have been blocked or their impact reduced by configuring users to run without administrative rights, said the company.
When BeyondTrust looked at the vulnerabilities patched for Microsoft’s browser, Internet Explorer (IE), and its application suite, Office, it found that 89% of the former and 94% of the latter could have been stymied by denying users administrative privileges.
"We were surprised to see how large the number was," said Scott McCarley, the company’s director of marketing. "It really drives home how critical a role [rights] play."
Need help with certain applications that “have to have admin rights to execute”? Look to BeyondTrust’s Privilege Manager which allows locking down the workstation while still providing the appropriate privileges to select applications.
Begin planning to eliminate end user Administrative rights: It’s not an impossibility, folks.
kurtsh
Kurt Shintaku's Blog 