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User Application Hardening OLD

User Application Hardening

What is User Application Hardening and how does it work?

Each day thousands of malicious files and scripts are created with malicious intent. These files are created by bad actors to cause damage to organisations and are designed to bypass traditional security measures such as Antivirus.

User Application Hardening is an activity undertaken by organisations to configure applications used by individuals to ensure that applications work correctly and securely within an organisation. User Application Hardening limits an application’s ability to be used in an unintended manner to compromise a system’s security 

The tools and techniques used to implement User Application Hardening are varied and are dependent on each organisation’s specific business needs and the applications used by the organisations.

Bad actors use Microsoft files with embedded Macros as part of phishing emails targeting users within an organisation. When a user opens the file, the Macro executes, performing malicious activity. This technique is one of the most prolific ways of compromising an organisation’s network and has a very high success rate.

It is difficult for anti-virus software to determine which Macros are malicious; as the software may be behaving as designed.

Computer Screen Malicious Software Security
IT security worker at a computer

Why is User Application Hardening important?

The purpose of User Application Hardening is to create multiple layers of security to make it increasingly difficult for bad actors to comprise a User based application to compromise a user’s device.  If one layer of security is breached, multiple security measures remain to protect the organisation’s computer systems.

The ACSC Essential Eight recommends hardening the configuration of User based applications that interact with the Internet (Web Browsers, Java, Flash, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc).

User Application Hardening can be extended to remove the ability to use deprecated products (like Microsoft Internet Explorer 11) which are no longer supported by vendors and have known vulnerabilities.

The complexity of User Application hardening is that hardening rules need to be applied across multiple browsers, applications, and operating systems.

Introspectus Key Features

What's the solution?

Introspectus helps organisations maintain control over the IT security of their business environment by automatically testing the effectiveness of User Application Hardening.

Introspectus checks the configuration of each application referencing the configuration of Group Policy, Local Policy, and application-specific policies. This information is analysed and a maturity score is generated for the organisation.

Introspectus generates real-time reports on the Maturity Level of an organisation’s User Application Hardening Controls against ACSC’s Essential Eight Maturity Model and any possible threats to user accounts.  It confirms that:

  • User Application Hardening policies are effective.
  • User Application Hardening is deployed to all endpoints and identifies any endpoints where the policies have not been implemented.
Introspectus Assessor Application Control

Automated Daily Tests

Introspectus automatically tests the effectiveness of User Application Hardening on all endpoints daily across multiple browsers, applications, and operating systems.

Identify Threats

Introspectus User Application Hardening controls and identifies any possible threats to user accounts.

Real-Time Reporting

Introspectus lets organisations confidently report to management that User Application Hardening is working effectively.

How Introspectus Helps

Each agent compares the current patch list against what is actually installed on its device. Any gap between what has been released and what is deployed is immediately surfaced. Critically, Introspectus pays particular attention to the timing of patch deployment not just whether a patch is present, but when it was applied.

This temporal dimension is central to Essential Eight compliance, where the difference between a patch applied on day two versus day thirty can mean the difference between maturity levels, and between an environment that was protected and one that was exposed.

This combination of daily patch intelligence, severity-based filtering, agent-level validation, and deployment timing analysis gives organisations a real-time, evidence-based view of their operating system patch posture mapped directly to the ISM controls applicable to the Essential Eight patch operating systems strategy.

The Challenge with Patch Operating Systems

The visibility gap here is particularly consequential. A patch may be approved and scheduled, yet never successfully applied due to a failed deployment, a device that was offline during the maintenance window, a reboot that was deferred, or a system that exists outside managed channels entirely.

Organisations that rely solely on deployment tooling to confirm patch status are measuring intent, not reality. The ACSC is explicit on this point: organisations need to confirm patches have been applied successfully, not merely that they were dispatched.

Patch Operating Systems Overview

Within the Essential Eight framework, patching operating systems is a core and non-negotiable control. The ACSC sets clear expectations: patches for internet-facing infrastructure must be applied within 48 hours when identified as critical or where working exploits exist, and within two weeks for standard releases.

Patches for workstations, servers, and network devices must be applied within one month, with tighter timeframes applying in high-threat environments. Critically, the ACSC also mandates that vulnerability scanning occurs at least daily for internet-facing systems and at least fortnightly for workstations and non-internet-facing infrastructure not to replace patching, but to confirm it has actually occurred.

How Introspectus Works

From this inventory, Introspectus performs targeted web intelligence gathering. For each application identified, the platform locates the top five authoritative sources of patch and release information vendor security advisories, release notes, and vulnerability databases and retrieves that content into a central repository.

Aletheia, Introspectus’s AI analysis agent, then reads and analyses this content to extract the intelligence that matters for application patching: the latest available version, whether a release addresses a security vulnerability, the severity of that vulnerability, and all information relevant to the Essential Eight application patching requirements. This structured intelligence is mapped directly to the applicable ISM controls, producing defensible, audit-ready evidence of an organisation’s application patch compliance posture.

The Challenge with Patch Applications

A critical and frequently overlooked problem is the visibility gap. Organisations may believe their applications are current when, in reality, patches have silently failed, devices have missed deployment windows, or software has been installed outside of managed channels entirely.

Without continuous inspection at the endpoint level, these gaps go undetected until an audit or, worse, a breach.

Patch Applications Overview

Within the Essential Eight standard, patching applications is a dedicated and non-negotiable control. The ACSC specifies clear timeframes: critical vulnerabilities in internet-facing services must be addressed within 48 hours, commonly used applications such as office productivity suites, web browsers, email clients and PDF software must be patched within two weeks of release, and all other applications within one month.

For organisations in high-threat environments, the bar is higher still. Meeting these requirements consistently across hundreds of distinct applications deployed across thousands of endpoints is not achievable through manual effort alone.