Manchester » 2nd March 2009 – Avecto Ltd, the most trusted name in least privilege management for corporate desktops, today announced the release of Privilege Guard 2.0, which includes full integration with Active Directory Group Policy. “The release of Privilege Guard 2.0 enables organizations of all sizes to leverage their existing Active Directory infrastructure to centrally configure and manage application privileges and implement least privilege”, said Mark Austin, CTO at Avecto.

Policies may be applied to both computer and user sections of Group Policy, with Active Directory ensuring that client computers are updated automatically at computer start up, user logon and during a background refresh. “With Group Policy background refresh occurring every 90 minutes by default, updates to Privilege Guard configuration settings can be deployed with ease to an organization’s entire desktop estate”, commented Austin.

Privilege Guard 2.0 also includes experimental support for Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 beta releases. “Improvements in Windows 7 User Access Control (UAC) reduce the number of end user consent dialogs, but continue to leave decisions to run applications with elevated rights in the hands of users”, said Austin. “Allowing users to logon with admin rights is inappropriate in a corporate environment, as it unnecessarily relies on users making critical security decisions”. Avecto continues to pioneer the least privilege approach for Microsoft’s much anticipated release of Windows 7, by allowing organizations to centrally manage the privileges assigned to individual applications through Group Policy.

Privilege Guard 2.0 is available immediately for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Window Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, and is supported on both x86 and x64 platforms.

To download an evaluation of Privilege Guard 2.0 register at www.avecto.com/download.