User Access Control (UAC) is a major development within access control and Windows Vista. For example, most of us remember how to use the Run As process in Windows XP and earlier: if you were logged on to your workstation as a normal user and needed to open a program with administrative privileges, you would ve needed to use the Run As feature and manually enter an administrator s credentials. In previous versions of Windows, local user accounts were often configured as members of the local Administrators group, which provided those users with unneeded system privileges and the ability to install and configure applications as well as perform management and administrative tasks on the workstation. With the advent of UAC, Windows Vista allows a user to function as a normal user until they perform an action that requires administrative rights, at which point UAC will prompt them accordingly

User accounts should not be able to do things they do not need to do. All that does is leave the door wide open for malware (or other forms of attack) that could compromise these accounts and allow access to system resources. Users should have only the privileges they need, and nothing more. With Windows Vista, UAC is used to separate user privileges from those that would require administrative rights and access. UAC defines access security by first limiting the surface area for attack. Accounts have been redefined so that if they are compromised, they will pose no security...