Restrict user's running applications

Hi guy's i was wondering if any of you know of an application that can stop user's from running 3rd party applications. The user's in question do not have local admin rights however they are sending application files via email or usb sticks and running them from that so there is not a full installation on the machine. An example would be using different browser's than what we have set up bypassing our group policy proxy settings. Any help would be appreciated. Cheers.

Which operating system are you using? I know Microsoft has the ability to create a whitelist of applications, but this seems like a pain in the neck.

I would be interested in solutions to this problem as well.

All the machines are windows xp..

Depends really on your budget. Websense's Client Policy Manager is pretty good and quite flexiable. Ofcourse, some HIDS can probably also do this by adding the signatures or the files that are not allowed (or you can do it the other way around and install what they can use and then block everything else).

Im pretty sure the budget wont be a problem. So in your opinion Smurf would websense be the best bet ?

I would do a little more research but what i have seen from Websense, the client policy manager is pretty good, not sure how the licensing works i.e. if you can get this on its own. Anyhow, here is a link, when i did my training on it the CPM looked pretty impresive but its not something we can install in our environment becauase we don't own the equipment. www.websense.com/global/en/ProductsServi...ClientPolicyManager/

There are others, Sophos Anti-Virus are also doing application control within their AV but currently its only got a limited number of applications within its database, their next release also has Removable Drive restrictions built in so you can stop users from using USB Pen Drives and the like. www.sophos.com/security/topic/application-control.html

You can do it in Group Policy for free but it can be a pain to configure.

Other google searches

www.google.co.uk/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=...ion+endpoint+control

www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=appl...tnG=Search&meta=

Cheers

Wayne