Summary

Summary

In my opinion, the principle of least privilege is the most powerful security tenet because an application that runs with minimal privileges can do very little more than it is ordinarily tasked to do. Remember that a secure application is one that does what it is supposed to do and no more. However, overcoming the hurdles of building a least-privilege application can be complex I often call it the Challenge of Least Privilege because of the effort required.

Don't fall into the bad habit of simply running services as SYSTEM and requiring that users be admins to use your application. If you do, not only are you leaving your clients open to serious consequences if they are compromised, but also as time passes by and you add more code to the system, it will become harder to run the application with reduced, and safer, privileges. And when you do take the plunge and run with reduced privileges, chances are good that you will break some older capability that will prevent users from getting their jobs done.

So get it right from the start: design, build, and test for least privilege, and document the privilege requirements for your applications.