Austin Powder, a manufacturing firm based in Ohio, faced an interesting challenge of taking their company to a least privilege model. They also needed to reduce malware threats within the organization.
![austinlogo[1]](http://blog.beyondtrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/austinlogo1.gif)
At the start of the project, the company knew little about the least privilege model. They began to develop an in-house solution, a wrapped RunAs command created with an administrator account, to help mitigate the problem. Their homegrown solution helped control malware, but it presented a challenge with uesrs because it was confusing and difficult for them to understand. It also resulted in an increase of expensive help desk calls every time settings needed to be changed or applications needed to be installed. With their solution not yielding the desired results, Austin Powder ultimately needed a solution that could solve the least privilege problem, cut down on malware in the enterprise, as well as decrease the number of calls to the help desk.
This is where BeyondTrust came in. PowerBroker Desktops, Windows Edition allows enterprises the ability to lock down users’ access while still allowing applications to run as necessary. Since malware targets accounts with administrative rights, locking down users significantly reduces these threats. It also solves the least privilege problem, as users are given only the amount of credentials as they need for their jobs. In addition, it decreases the amount of help desk calls as users are already given what they need instead of being forced to request it.
