Microsoft® Windows® Security: Essentials

Starting Applications with Run As Administrator

Many organizations require administrators to use two different accounts. One account is for regular day-to-day work and doesn’t have administrative rights or permissions. The second account has elevated (administrative) permissions. Administrators only use the elevated-permissions account when performing administrative work.

The majority of the time, an IT worker will be logged on as a regular user. If they need to perform administrative work, they can launch an application with administrative permissions or by using their administrative credentials. For example, users can run many commands as an administrator by right-clicking an item and selecting Run As Administrator, as shown in Figure 3-11 ...