RE: Removing Local Admin Rights...

["Robinson, Sonja" <SRobinson () HIPUSA com>]

Yes, we are/did the same (LAR, disallowing untested/unapproved s/w).  We
received pushback but the reality is, one personson convenience is 20
people's OT to patch and clean viruses.  To back up your position, for each
incident you have, document it's cost in man hours, food, OT, travel
home/limo, hardware, investigation time, everything.  One small incident of
15 workstations can cost a significant amount of time and money.  Frankly,
the prevention can be a little time consuming and a bit of a hassle at times
but it is well worth the price.  Especially when your IT group hasn't slept
for days becaus of patching.  Also, the long hours reduces morale and you'll
lose good technical people.  In some cases, there are apps that "require"
LAR to run.  We don't allow that. We actually write scripts to fix this if
the vendor won't although why vendors continue to code like this is beyond
me.  These apps really should not require this to run, i.e. Broderbund
ClipArt among others.

You can block USB devices too.  We are implementing this as well.  NO
removable media, no non-standard s/w, no LAR without InfoSec approval.  It's
reality now.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Stowell [mailto:jts () deforest k12 wi us]
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 3:42 PM
To: jlopez_si86 () hotmail com; security-basics () lists securityfocus com
Subject: Re: Removing Local Admin Rights...


We're a bit smaller -- 1,000 desktops running Win2k.  We instituted a
policy like yours about two years ago.  We run into problems with
USB devices, and need to install but other than that our experience 
has been positive.  Since we instituted the policy, support requests
are down about 35%.


Tom Stowell
Network Administrator
DeForest Area School District
520 E. Holum St.
DeForest, WI 53532
Fax: (608)-842-6545
Voice: (608)-842-6500
Email: <jts () deforest k12 wi us>


console, n. [From latin consolatio(n) "comfort, spiritual solace."] A device
for displaying or printing condolances or obituaries for the operator.
            -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Computer Contradictionary.


> > > "Jay Lopez" <jlopez_si86 () hotmail com> 05/25/04 08:48AM >>>
I currently work for an organization with approximately 25,000 Windows 
XP/2000 desktops in an Active Directory (AD) environment.  Security from an 
OS and individual application component (i.e., Outlook 2003, MS Office, IE, 
etc.) perspective is being managed via group policy objects (GPO's).

Currently, we are pushing to remove local administrator access rights to 
individual machines to prevent users from randomly installing unapproved 
applications, prevent malware from being silently installed within the local

administrator context, etc.  Prior to our move to AD and GPO's, we received 
push-back on removing local admin rights for reasons such as the logon 
scripts would not work, etc.

By chance, have any of you implemented any of the above--especially the 
removal of local administrator rights?  If so, what support issues did you 
experience?  What impact did removing local admin rights have?

I'd like to provide as many pros and cons back to our team based on your 
feedback.

Thanks in advance,

Jay Lopez

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