Client Management Suite

I looked on line but can not find a good read to send to my mangers.

Can anyone point me or paste a good read that I can send to management.

We are interested in the blacklist and stoping certain applications from being run or installled.

Were interested in other features as well. 

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For NS 7.0.

I need the intro read to application metering 7.

Thanks

 

I provide a link at the bottom here for the Inventory Solution User's Guide, which will cover the Application Metering product from a technical perspective.

But first, from a broader perspective, I'm reading this White Paper right now by Nelson Ruest and Danielle Ruest:
http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/white_papers/b-whitepaper_stand_sys_management_2006-01_en.us.pdf

This would be a good management read, but isn't specifically about Application Metering.

It talks about the role of IT, the importance of standardization, and how IT moves towards an automated environment.  The concepts they talk about there may help you address the core issues of why you need blacklisting.  For example, maybe the users have too much control.  The white paper talks about principles like "All IT systems are corporate systems."  If you propose blacklisting, you'll have to prove the point that the system does not belong to the person, it belongs to the company -- and not just that it belongs to the company, but that IT is the only group purposed with controlling it.

Principles mentioned in the white paper like "Lock down all systems" and "Standardize all configurations" (which sound extreme) may also help your case.  It draws on research by the authors and also from secondary sources like Gartner Research.

Application Metering is part of Inventory Solution 7.0.  You can read the Altiris Inventory Solution User’s Guide, Version 7.0 here:
http://www.altiris.com/upload/inventory_user_gde.pdf

Don't hesitate to repackage the technical information you learn in the User's Guide as a PowerPoint presentation or document for management by applying business applications specific to the environment you manage.  That's what I'm doing to show the applicability of CMS7.

Tim,
You can set denial policies to blacklist apps with certain file properties (i.e. "InternalName=limewire", "File Name = firefox.exe").  For more details, read the User's Guide mclemson linked to, in particular "chapter" 8 of the PDF, starting on page 77.  There are other methods available to use Whitelisting instead which may be more suitable, but this is not available as part of CMS7.  I think there is some capability for that in Symantec SEP and some other plug-ins for Altiris Agent 6.x and/or 7.x.  Some additional info:

Savant Protection for Application Whitelisting
http://blogs.gartner.com/neil_macdonald/2009/03/31/will-whitelisting-eliminate-the-need-for-antivirus/

Also to note; using the .exe name should be a "last ditch" method, since the user or the application creator can just change the .exe file name.  It requires some somewhat uncommon tools (ResEdit being one) to modify file header information.

and find it to be an excellent product. It has integration points directly with Altiris and WSUS (although you can create more).