Prohibited Software

Prohibited Software (or) Blacklisted Software as they are popularly known is a common phenomenon that network administrators need to take care of, as a part of their daily routine. Every organization maintains a list of prohibited software that are barred from employee usage. Some of the most common software that are belong to the blacklisted software category, include gaming and social networking applications, who's presence/usage by employees might equate to serious productivity losses apart from the compliance issues they may raise. Therefore prohibiting software is not a choice anymore, rather a mandatory routine that avoids productivity/compliance lapses.

Desktop Central helps prohibit, usage of certain blacklisted software in accordance to your company policies. Detecting such prohibited software will help tackle any compliance and productivity issues their presence can render. Moreso, you can achieve this without actually spending too much time. All that you have got to do is Configure Prohibited Software and rest assured Desktop Central takes care of it all.

Complete solution to keep a check on Prohibited Software

Desktop Central helps you to fully-automate the Detection and Removal of prohibited software. You can configure the following using Desktop Central's Prohibited Software module:

1. Enlist applications to be Blacklisted.
2. Detect Prohibited Software in your network.
3. Auto-Uninstall the Blacklisted Software.
4. Exempt computers from Auto-Uninstallation Routine
5. Notify Admin and end-users whenever prohibited software is detected.
6. Generate a Report on Prohibited Software.

Enlist applications to be Blacklisted: After an initial scan of your network computers, you can specify the list of software that are to be prohibited in your company. These software will be detected during the subsequent scan cycles.

Auto-uninstall Prohibited Software: You can choose to automatically remove the software within a specified time frame, once it is detected in the client machine. The auto-uninstall option helps to ward-off of the blacklisted software from your network with ease.

Exempt computers from Auto-Uninstallation Routine: Most organizations will upfront prohibit usage of prohibited software by their employees. However top-level executives at these organizations might need such applications to communicate with clients, etc and this becomes crucial to carry out business.One classic example is the usage of chat based applications. During such occasions, the "Exclude list" option comes in handy. You can enlist specific computers into a common custom group and and add it to the Exclude list. Computers in the "Exclude List" will be exempted from Auto-Uninstallation.

Prohibited Software Notification & Reporting: You can configure and receive notification through email whenever a blacklisted software is identified by the Desktop Central application during its regular scan cycles of your network. Both Admin Users and end users can receive these alerts. Also, during the auto-uninstallation, users will be notified during the time frame between detection and removal. You can also generate the Prohibited Software Report to find the computers in your network using such applications at any given point of time.

For more details, refer to the Configure Prohibited Software topic in the online help.