Not that we necessarily needed a report to tell us this, but the fewer privileges you afford yourself as a Windows user, the more secure your operating system becomes. Such is the conclusion of a new report from BeyondTrust, a company that -- surprise, surprise -- sells software for "privileged access management." The only way
we use
Windows 7 is as admins and we've never had a moment's bother, but some of you like stats, and others among you might be involved in business, which tends to make people a little more antsy about these things. So for your collective sake, let there be pie charts! The report looks into vulnerabilities disclosed by Microsoft during 2009 and concludes that
all 55 reported Microsoft Office issues and 94 percent of the 33 listed for IE could be prevented by simply running a standard user account. Or using
better software, presumably. Hit the PDF source for more info -- go on, it's not like you have anything better to do while waiting for
the Large Hadron Collider to go boom.
posted March 30th 2010 6:44AM
Kind of a "Well duhh" kind of study, but it reminded me to turn off the admin account on my parents computer. Who knows what those old folks could mess up :-P
@Nitesh Like e-mail is so much worse than your youtube, facebook, and hulu right?
@gigarath
Yes, it is, because they have no way of discerning what attachments are safe or not. I do.