Bit9

Over the past few months we've been reading more and more about how application whitelisting solutions - like Bit9's - may end up becoming the de facto mechanism for securing corporate Windows PCs in the near future.

So let's assume for a moment that yes, application whitelisting is the wave of the future and yes, you will be basing your security strategy on only allowing software that you know and trust to run in your environment. The next obvious question is...

What can you do to prepare for running an environment where people can only use company-authorized software? In the next few postings I'll present some ways to assess your readiness for enterprise application whitelisting.

Without further ado, here's the first question you can ask yourself to determine if you are ready for whitelisting.

Question 1: Is your IT staff stretched too thin?

If you have got an IT staff that is too busy "fighting fires" on users' systems and cleaning up after messy software downloads or ugly malware incidents, you are probably aching to get more control over your desktops. After all - your IT staff's time is too valuable to be spent on every little problem that comes up. There are bigger fish to fry, like when you are going to deploy Windows Vista, or how to consolidate computing resources across the enterprise, or how to achieve PCI, SOX, and HIPAA compliance.

Yet many IT departments simply get behind the 8-ball with respect to their desktop infrastructure. As users' computers age, the software on them drifts so that they look very different from how they looked when they were first provisioned. Those inconsistencies cause problems in everything from security to auditability to software licensing costs.

But imagine for a minute what would happen if you could eliminate those inconsistencies. If you could ensure that a software you provisioned did not drift from your original copy of it - and only software you approved or authorized was allowed to run on it.

Wouldn't this make your job so much easier? Wouldn't it reduce the number of problems you have to deal with on a monthly and even daily basis? You bet it would! And customers who have implemented application whitelisting are realizing every day how much more productive they can be when they aren't spending all their times firefighting.

So if you think your IT staff hasn't got the time to address the initiatives it should be... you are probably ready for enterprise application whitelisting!