ManageEngine Application Control Plus

Modern advancements in the tech industry have led to an ample supply of software applications to address every business requirement in any given niche. From design and marketing apps to essential office productivity software, free and paid versions can directly be downloaded from the internet.

Alongside a horde of useful software, there exist many unsafe applications that can make their way into an organization's IT network with inadequate monitoring practices in place.

These unsafe applications can serve as potential gateways to facilitate data leakage and the intrusion of malware into managed devices thereby contributing to a failure to meet security requirements and guidelines imposed by regulatory agencies.

Some popular types of applications regarded as unsafe include remote desktop sharing software, software that operate on a peer-to-peer network architecture; for example torrent downloading applications like UTorrent & BitTorrent, End-of-life applications and other software that hinder employee productivity such as games.

Exercising manual control over applications across an enterprise environment can be time and resource intensive, thus calling for a software based approach. However, not many endpoint management technologies have this feature out of the box and finding a software that encompasses the right set of tools can be quite a challenge.

Introducing Application Control Plus - a new and innovative security solution, purpose-built to monitor and regulate applications across a business IT network. This ManageEngine product lets you automate the generation and upkeep of application whitelists and blacklists.

Application Control Plus comprises of multiple features to streamline the entire application control cycle from start to finish. Some compelling features are application whitelisting, application black listing and the built-in flexibility regulator.

Application whitelisting as the name suggests, involves creating a list of applications to be deemed as trusted by default. Application whitelists allow IT admins to minimize threats that arise from software vulnerabilities, thus ensuring that applications used by their workforce cannot be leveraged during a cyber attack.

Application whitelisting also allows admins to streamline IT asset management by eliminating time gone into managing patches and licenses for unnecessary apps. Application Control Plus improves whitelisting by allowing admins to set access permissions based on emploees' role and job requirements.

Application blacklisting is another important feature that prevents specified applications or executables from installing and running on managed systems. Apart from blocking unauthorized applications, Application Control Plus takes a stride forward In keeping apps that interfere with employee productivity at bay.

These include social media and instant messaging apps. Since some of these apps may still find use among certain organizational units for activities like team collaboration, Application Control Plus allows admins to create multiple custom groups of users and associate specific whitelists and blacklists with these custom groups.

The built-in flexibility regulator allows admins to tailor the application control process around the exact requirements of their enterprise. This feature is specially designed for admins who are getting started with building their application control framework. The flexibility regulator introduces two modes of operation: Strict mode and audit mode.

While the strict mode only allows applications that are present in white lists, the audit mode allows apps that are present in both whitelists and greylists. In either of the two modes, applications present in blacklists will be blocked.

Another interesting feature of Application Control Plus is the dedicated endpoint privilege management tab. This feature allows product users to collectively group applications that need to be run as administrator, to a list of privileged applications.

Once privileged applications are grouped, admins can dictate which custom groups can run applications as administrators using suitable policies. This is done to ensure that admin privileges are not excessively distributed among standard users in an enterprise layout.

Similar to many ManageEngine products Application Control Plus offers a completely free edition, which is fully functional and applicable for SMBs (up to 25 managed computers). The Professional edition starts at $995 for 100 workstations per year and offers a free-trial period of 30 days. Download the free-trial and get started today!