Tools
Removing local admin rights without breaking everyone
The highest-value endpoint control and the one most often abandoned halfway. Why it fails, and the sequence that gets it done.
Microsoft
ThreatLocker
Why this is worth the pain
A large share of endpoint malware needs elevation to do anything durable. Take local administrator away and a whole class of attack degrades from a compromise into an annoyance. There are few controls with that ratio of effect to licence cost, because the licence cost is frequently zero.
It is also the control most likely to be started and abandoned, because it fails politically rather than technically.
The sequence that survives contact with users
Measure elevation before you remove anything
Find out what people actually elevate for over a full month. The list is always shorter than IT fears and different from what IT predicted.
Fix the top five reasons first
Usually a printer driver, one legacy line-of-business application, and a developer toolchain. Solve those before removing rights and you remove most of the resistance.
Remove rights from new devices first
Nobody misses a right they never had. New starters and rebuilt devices go out without local admin, which shrinks the population you have to argue with.
Give a defined elevation path, not an exception list
A request that gets approved and expires. Permanent exceptions are how the project ends with forty percent of the estate still holding admin.
Where a product helps
Only after the measurement step. Buying first is how organisations end up automating a process they had not designed.
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The verdict
Start with Intune and Windows LAPS, before buying anything
Local Administrator Password Solution is included and solves the shared local admin password problem immediately. Do that, measure elevation, and only then decide whether you need a product.
Do not start this in the same quarter as an operating system migration or a Microsoft 365 rollout. It needs goodwill, and those spend it.
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