BeyondTrust Announces Application Control in PowerBroker Desktops 5.2

BeyondTrust, the leading provider of privilege delegation and authorization management solutions, today announced the release of PowerBroker® Desktops, Windows Edition v5.2, bringing comprehensive application control to its award-winning privilege management product.

Application control (whitelisting) offers IT departments centralized, granular control over which applications can or cannot run on corporate desktops and laptops. When combined with PowerBroker’s patented privilege escalation technology, application control can reduce or eliminate the spread of viruses, Trojans, worms, and other malware, and potentially save thousands of dollars per user in annual support costs. Also new in this release is enhanced message box customization, additional reporting features and an improved installation experience.

"We believe the addition of application control (whitelisting) in PowerBroker Desktops will make it much simpler to bring malware and insider threats under control," said Hassan Zaidan, IT Director at Allen-Vanguard. "PowerBroker Desktops ensures that even our highest risk desktops are secure, by allowing only approved applications to run, and making sure users and applications run with only the privileges they need."

With the automation and group policy integration of PowerBroker Desktops, removing admin rights has never been simpler or safer. Add the unique ability to target individual computers or users just within certain Active Directory groups, and PowerBroker Desktops is also the most flexible solution on the market. By leveraging the same key technologies for application control, BeyondTrust is setting a new standard for endpoint security.

“Until now, deploying and managing application control on windows desktops was complex and impractical,” said Peter Beauregard, senior director of program management at BeyondTrust. “With PowerBroker Desktops 5.2 we’ve made it really easy by automatically finding the applications your users need, and what privileges those applications need to run. After that, selecting which applications you want to allow or deny is as simple as cut and paste.”

PowerBroker Desktops 5.2 also includes:

• Enhanced message box customization – provides context-specific messages within every message box presented to the user, improving the end-user experience
• Additional reporting features – supports automated rule generation for whitelisting and enables network administrators to rapidly audit large and diverse user bases, determine what applications are running, and automatically create whitelist rules to support them
• Improved installation experience – reduces the complexity of installing advanced reporting services to a simple point-and-click installer

“There is no silver bullet in information security, but if managed correctly, application control coupled with a privileged identity management solution can provide exceptional protection from zero day and targeted attacks,” said Neil MacDonald, vice president and fellow at Gartner.

With PowerBroker Desktops 5.2, organizations can defend and secure the perimeter within by eliminating admin rights and controlling the execution of applications, software installs, ActiveX controls, and system tasks – all while keeping the user safe and productive. For more information about PowerBroker Desktops, and the new application control features, BeyondTrust is hosting a webinar: To Whitelist or Not to Whitelist: Practical Application Control and Privilege Management for Windows 7, with Microsoft MVP Derek Melber, on February 28^th at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT. For more information and to register please click here.

PowerBroker Desktops 5.2 is available immediately. To download a free evaluation visit www.beyondtrust.com.

About BeyondTrust

Founded in 1985, BeyondTrust is the global leader in privilege authorization management, access control and security solutions for physical, virtual, cloud computing environments. The company’s products mitigate insider threats and secure the perimeter within across the enterprise, empowering IT governance to strengthen security, improve productivity, drive compliance and reduce expense.

More than half of the companies listed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rely on BeyondTrust’s PowerBroker suite of products to secure their enterprises.

Five of the top ten commercial banks and two of America’s largest private companies have adopted PowerBroker to secure guest operating systems and ESX hypervisors in a virtualized environment. For more information, visit www.beyondtrust.com.

BeyondTrust, the BeyondTrust logo and PowerBroker are trademarks or registered trademarks, in the United States and certain other countries of BeyondTrust Software. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual companies and are respectfully acknowledged.