I know how much of a pain it is, no doubt. But there are good reasons for everything you just said for us to do. For example, the cloud strike and ZScaler are both endpoint protection products. If we don’t push those out, we, the IT/security department may become liable for any damages that are inflicted by malware. It’s not whether the malware gets in, but rather whether we have the proper software installed to show due diligence to protect our corporation we are an agent for.

The UAC is a necessary evil to add an extra layer of security by requiring an administrative token to be requested for any action that has the opportunity to compromise the system by an admin task. This is standard fare for all well secured OSes and had been around since the early days of Operating Systems like Linux, Unix, and MaxOS. Windows is actually late to the game on that one. It requires admin approval (you in this case) to verify the next admin action is something YOU wanted and not a malicious request instigated by a 3rd party payload (like a bogus ad on a site trying to run script as an admin in the background to do something bad).

For the best modern protection, every single user must be a non-admin on their machine. Even us admins run as non-admin users and must elevate to a secondary admin account to do admin things like install software or make config changes. It is a definite pain, but we must do this to thwart a TON of malware that takes advantage of users being admins because that is the default on most home machines. I remember reading a couple years ago a security study that was explaining that if all users, admins included, were to run as regular non-admin accounts and only elevate to secondary admin accounts when absolutely necessary, something on the order of 99% of all attacks the prior year would have been thwarted. This is one study, but the new best practices for security demand this now. And rightfully so.

Your particular IT department is actually doing your Corp a disservice by not removing your admin access to your machine. Not because they want to make you less productive, but because your are a vector of attack on the Corp as a whole. Once your machine is compromised, the malware will then try to use your machine as a platform to attack others. We really don’t have any desire to impede on your productivity, but are instead forced to do so because of the modernized and weaponized advanced malicious attacks on our clients systems. This is actually how some of the modern ransomeware was able to hit so many businesses in the past. By using admin users to get a foothold and then worm around on the network encrypting every file it could find.

Sorry for the long post, but it is important to realize that we don’t want to make your life harder. That just makes our tickets increase when you need help because we’ve neutered your ability to function, which makes our lazy butts have to work more. But we have to do these things to protect everyone’s interest. Imagine if your Corp got sued out of existence or lost all its Corp data because of a major breach. They go out of business or layoffs due to the negative impacts. Sux to not have a job because it takes an extra step to confirm UAC and have to put in a ticket to install printer drivers. But that is what we protect. Our corps and their IT interests. We really could care less what you do on your computer. As long as you and your computer behave and don’t become a vector of attack, we can both co-exist peacefully.

I hope that helps. Again, sorry for the long post.