Application Control

Application Control: what's behind it all?

Application control is indispensable in many areas. It is a combination of dynamic whitelisting and rights management.
That way, the execution of code by unauthorized individuals is prevented. At the same time, however, the IT department does not have to manually manage extensive lists for it.

Risks are reduced through user management and application control.

Application Control needs to strike the right balance between user productivity and security. It can be used to precisely control what users can do on servers and endpoints. This significantly reduces the risks of zero-day exploits and malware.

On the one hand, blocking access can affect productivity, but on the other hand, access cannot be left completely open either. Ultimately, that would result in an increased attack surface as well as increased administrative costs and downtime.

Furthermore, such open access would violate license compliance regulations. It must always be possible to enforce security policies at a granular level - but at the same time, there must be a balance between user access and productivity requirements.

This is why rights management matters

Full admin rights can make endpoints vulnerable. This applies both to vulnerability to malware and to unlicensed software. Permissions can be dynamically extended, reduced or even eliminated at any time with Application Control.

Not only can Application Control be used to increase or restrict permissions, but it can also be used to provide permissions to specific applications or tasks that users must use.

In addition, the user's own rights can also be extended. Likewise, temporary extension of rights is also possible in exceptional cases. In addition, access can be tracked, as can usage and allocation.

The effectiveness of the Application Whitelisting principle

Seculution's modern antivirus protection offers more than just protection of the computer against malware. That is due to the functional principle of application whitelisting and application control.

An ordinary virus scanner filters out what is restricted. This is the principle of the blacklist. Whitelisting, on the other hand, works on exactly the opposite principle. Here, everything necessary for the job is defined from the outset, and everything else is automatically blocked.

This way, malware has no chance at all, as it is automatically warded off. Even if the malware is continuously modified, it still cannot overcome that barrier, because it is simply not whitelisted. Thanks to our verification methodology based on hashes, it is no longer possible for attackers to use cryptographic methods to generate malware capable of duping common detection methods and masquerading as trustworthy software.

As far as the traditional blacklist approach is concerned, it has now become extremely difficult for virus scanners in conjunction with application control to reliably identify malware that has been specifically adapted to bypass detection for years. A blacklist is only able to block what it already knows. Thousands of uniquely obfuscated and modified malware variants are the new norm. Unknown to the system, they manage to completely bypass any blacklisting attempts and are specifically designed to evade common detection heuristics to wreak havoc on the network unhindered.

Malware and traditional anti-virus software have been locked in an arms race for decades, each specializing in defeating the other's latest tricks and attack vectors. In the process, both have lost sight of the big picture. With modern technology, the smarter approach has become to simply sidestep their combined tunnel vision altogether. The highly specialized method of attack modern malware operates with categorically won't prove effective anymore, with seculution Application Whitelisting on your side. seculution allows classic antivirus software to be replaced, and malware to be locked out for good. The patented technology also eliminates the need for complex extensions, such as deep learning malware detection or anti-ransomware technology.