NEW AppSense Functionality Being Demo’d At Citrix Synergy – “User Rights Management”

I am pleased to announce that as part of our pioneering leadership in user virtualization solutions and newly appointed Citrix Ready Solution Partner of the Year 2010, AppSense will be previewing a major new feature in our award winning software at Citrix Synergy this week – User Rights Management.
Please feel free to pop by our booth to see an exclusive sneak preview!

User Rights Management is an essential part of Policy Management within desktop management and solves one of the biggest headaches for system administrators, support desks and the user base. Part of the AppSense Virtualized User Infrastructure, User Rights Management extends our Policy Management capability by enabling the elevation or reduction of user rights on a user, application or business rule basis.

What is the need for User Rights Management? – What issues does it resolve?
IT don’t want users run as Administrators on their desktop, as this gives them access to areas of the desktop that, if misused, could result in high support costs and a compromised user experience.  In the worst cases, security could be compromised through the loss of data or attack from malicious software.  However, there are cases where users do need Admin access rights in order to fulfil their role.  For example, many proprietary applications, applications that allow changes to be made to hardware settings such as network adapters, applications that allow the installation of drivers for devices like printers and applications that write to secure parts of registry all require administrative rights to execute. In addition, many daily tasks such as; system updates such as Windows updates, antivirus scans and signature/definition updates, or the installation Active-X, Adobe/Flash/Java updates, synching devices require a user to be running as an Administrator.

The typical method of enabling Administrator rights today is an on/off switch.  The user either has full Admin rights or no Admin rights to the desktop and all applications. User Rights Management ensures that only certain users are able to have Admin rights to certain applications in certain situations.  The aim is to provide the business with a means to balance user needs with IT cost.

What are the features of AppSense User Rights Management?

1 –  Elevation of user rights to run applications.
Allow the System Administrator to specify which applications can be run with Admin credentials.  The user does not actually have Admin credentials but is able to run the specific application which requires Admin rights.

2 – Elevation of user rights for running control panel applets.
As mentioned, some users need the ability to change printer, wireless network, time & date settings etc.. however these require the user to have Admin rights.  AppSense can elevate rights for individual applets, meaning a standard user can still make the required changes and do their job without running as a local admin.

3 – Reduction of user rights to restrict application rights.
System Administrators can now reduce credentials for specific applications, so the user runs as an Administrator, but certain applications are forced to run as a standard user meaning the user is unable to make any undesirable changes, such as running Internet Explorer as a standard user or in safe-mode.

4 – Reduction of user rights to restrict access to system settings.
System Administrators can now prevent Admin level users from changing settings they should not be able to, such as; security or firewall settings or stopping system services.  So even though the user has admin rights, the system administrator remains in control of the desktop

I hope this has been a useful insight into one of the many things coming from AppSense in 2010 – and as mentioned, for anyone at Citrix Synergy, please do pop over to the booth to learn more!

Comments and thoughts on the new functionality are always appreciated.

Cheers
Gaz