Granting all users Admin Rights

From: Robert A Klopotoski Jr (eaglek96@hotmail.com)
Date: 05/16/02 

From: eaglek96@hotmail.com (Robert A Klopotoski Jr)
Date: 16 May 2002 13:38:21 -0700

Hello All,

I am currently the network manager at a small college with about 250
faculty and staff compuers(1500 students). I am in the middle of
implementing a windows 2000 domain. The network is currently peer to
peer workgroups with win95, 98 and 2000 clients. In the process of
building the domain, I am also trying to get every client onto windows
2000 so I can take advantage of the many features it allows in
conjunction with active directory. The most important thing to me
since I am starting from scratch is setting up rules and guidelines
for the users of the network. My background before working here was
working at a high-tech engineering company.

Recently I have hit a snag with the management here where we cannot
agree on whether or not users should be allowed local administrative
rights on their machines. In my last company I was forced to give
admin rights to most users so they could develop and install hardware
on their local machine. I don't really see the need for the rights
here, but the people making the executive decisions disagree with me.
I am curious to know how other colleges or academic institutions deal
with this issue. It is my opinion that people should not need admin
rights as a function of their job and any software installations
should be routed through IT. The people making the decisions feel
that restricting rights would infringe upon adademic freedom.

I see several problems with granting a regular user admin rights. The
main reason is that system files become accessible and could be
corrupted very easily by accidental clicks, viruses, etc... I also
want to be able to control the licensing of software, and want to keep
the shareware to a minimum. Not having admin rights greatly reduces
their ability of screwing things up on the machine. It also increases
the security of each machine by knowing that many services can't be
inadvertantly disabled or uninstalled.

The users that I am referring to are all Faculty and Staff. Each
person has a machine in their office to use. We are not an
engineering school or anything like that, and only have a few teachers
who teach computer related fields.

If some people could give their feelings on this it would be greatly
appreciated. I apologize if some of you feel this isnt the right
newsgroup, but to me this seems like a security issue. Mainly my
question is asking how other groups handle this? Should we give in
and grant rights to everyone, or is it important to stand firm on my
own opinion.

Thanks in advance
Rob

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