Comprehensive Guide to Application Control Strategies

To seamlessly implement a strict allowlist policy in an organization by leveraging ManageEngine Endpoint Central's Application Control, we have curated a list of expert-recommended application control best practices.

1. Create computer groups based on your enterprise-specific requirements

   The creation of computer groups is the first step to ensure application and privilege monitoring in the network. Once the devices are segregated based on app usage or privilege requirements, admins can then streamline custom policies to these groups for efficient management. Using the Custom Groups functionality in Endpoint Central, admins can create groups of endpoints, and the group-specific policies can seamlessly be deployed with a single click.

2. Group applications based on departments or functionality to simplify management

   Grouping applications is a powerful way to simplify managing applications across your organization. With Application Groups, you can group applications based on criteria like similarity, function, or department of your organization. This makes it easier to map applications to specific users based on their work requirements and ensures that they have access only to the apps required for business activities. Admins can seamlessly devise policies for the application groups as a whole, without managing individual applications. This simplifies policy creation and reduces the risk of unauthorized application usage.

3. Audit applications running in your enterprise network to gain granular visibility

   Gaining visibility into application usage is essential for network security. Audit Mode helps monitor unmanaged applications to make informed decisions about access control on the applications that need to be allowed or blocked from being accessed in the network. The applications that hamper productivity can be blocked.

4. Heighten security by restricting applications

   Once an allowlist has been created with all the necessary applications, enforce a zero-trust security model by switching to Strict Mode. This minimizes the attack surface since only the allow listed applications are allowed to be accessed in the network and prevents unauthorized application execution as no unmanaged applications are allowed to run in Strict Mode.

5. Allow users to request access to applications

   From time to time, various business-critical tasks might pop up, requiring the usage of applications that are not specified within an allowlist. For instance, a support technician might require a video-conferencing application to interact with a customer, which isn't a part of the allowlist specified. Since the strict mode prevents unmanaged applications from being accessed, this could impact productivity.
   To address this, users can request access to specific applications via Application Control's Request Access feature. Admins can then approve, deny, or block these requests, ensuring security and minimal productivity delay.