Introduction to Application Control: Sample Communication

Over the coming weeks, your IT team will introduce Application Control as an additional layer of defense against viruses and malware. IT is taking this step because of an increased number of infections and the rising cost of remediating them. These infections impact your productivity and leave confidential company information vulnerable to theft.

What is Application Control and how does it help?

Application Control prevents virus and malware attacks without impacting productivity. Application Control accomplishes this goal by only allowing use of applications that the company has approved. Approved applications are added to a "whitelist." The applications that you use are likely already on this list.

However, any unauthorized applications that are not whitelisted or violate the Application Control rules engine are blocked from executing. This is an effective security model that will reduce the frequency and cost of virus and malware incidents.

What does this mean for me?

There are a number of phases to the Application Control rollout. Your IT team will communicate with you at each phase so that you know what to expect and any potential impact it might have on you. The key phases are as follows:

  1. Patch and Clean Endpoints

    To ensure we start from a “known good” state, all endpoints are patched to eliminate any known vulnerabilities. Endpoints are also scanned for malware.

  2. Create Endpoint Whitelist

    Your computer is scanned to create a whitelist containing all the executable files on your computer. During this phase your computer is audited while we define policies that govern how changes (e.g., patches, application updates, etc.) can take place on your computer in the future.

    (Optional) Application Controlalso provides the ability to block application usage, and we plan to block the use of software unrelated to business, including games and music streaming software. A full list of restricted applications (and corporate approved alternatives, where appropriate) will be distributed in the future.

  3. Define and Review Trusted Change Policies

    Until we are satisfied that your productivity will not be adversely affected by Application Control enforcement, your computer will continue to operate in audit mode. During this audit, we will update policies to account for unexpected events.

  4. Lock Down Endpoints

    Once we are prepared, we will enable enforcement for Application Control, giving you significantly improved protection against virus and malware attacks. Any files that are not on the whitelist or are not authorized to run by an Application Control policy will be blocked.

  5. Monitor Logs and Update Policies

    Once enforcement is active, there will be a process available to request approval for any applications denied by corporate policy.

The rollout will proceed in phases across the organization, with additional groups of users being added over time. For a given group of users, the rollout process is expected to last one month.

If you have any questions or concerns about the proposed rollout, you should contact your manager, who will relay these concerns to the IT team.