Antivirus asks whether a file looks bad. Execution control asks a different question entirely: is this on the list. For a machine handling the till, the books and the customer records, that second question is the useful one, since it does not rely on anybody having seen the file before.
It starts by watching. For a fortnight the agent notes what your staff genuinely run: point of sale, the accounts package, that utility for the label printer, the ancient thing from a supplier which has never been updated and never will be. That becomes the list, and nothing gets blocked while it is learning.
Then the list starts holding. Anything not on it asks permission rather than running, and the request lands with an engineer at Fortify 24x7 instead of in a dialog box your busiest member of staff will click straight through. Approvals come back within minutes during trading hours, and routine vendor releases get followed, so a Monday morning update cannot shut the counter.
You do not have to cover everything on day one, and most small firms should not. Put it where the damage would be worst: the machine that touches payments, the one the bookkeeper uses, the server holding the records, and any laptop that leaves the building with all three of those on it.
Ringfencing gets underestimated more than anything else here. An approved program is still only allowed to do approved things, so the spreadsheet application everybody needs is not also permitted to start a scripting engine and reach somewhere it has no business reaching.
Figures underneath come straight from billing when this page opens. Whatever you set falls into the composing stick and sits there until you are done reading.
Deny by default on the machines handling money and records. Unapproved software gets no vote on whether it runs, which deletes a whole category of ruined afternoon.
| Set on | ThreatLocker |
|---|---|
| Prints | A refusal, plus a request an engineer clears in minutes |
| Standing type | The register, which holds until somebody deliberately moves it |
| Locked by | Our desk at Fortify 24x7, which takes approvals and elevation |
| Proofed by | A record of what was refused, what was cleared, and by whom |
A very strong control with a narrow job. Marked up here is what the line does not do, so that nobody asks it to.
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