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Application Control OLD

Application Control

What is Application Control and how does it work?

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

Application control (Whitelisting) is a technique used by organisations to only allow the execution of known and trusted applications that have been approved by the organisation. Because malicious files have not been approved to run, Application Control is a very effective way of blocking the execution of malicious scripts within a target organisation.

The tools and techniques used to implement Application Control are varied and are dependent on each organisation’s specific business needs.

Introspectus Assessor Application Control
Cloud based Cyber Security Solutions

Why is Application Control so important?

The purpose of Application Control is to create multiple layers of security to make it increasingly difficult for bad actors to run malicious code in a target organisation. If one layer is breached, multiple security measures remain to protect the organisation’s computer systems.

Traditional Antivirus software cannot block applications when they encounter new, unknown malware, especially in cases where an organisation is being targeted by a sophisticated bad actor.

Application Control protects against unknown malware by only allowing known and trusted applications and scripts to run within the organisation.

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instances of malware are detected every day. (DataProt)
0 %
of hackers spreading malware deliver the virus through email. (Verizon)
0 %
of computer malware is trojans. (DataProt)

Introspectus Key Features

What's the solution?

Introspectus helps organisations to maintain control over the IT security of their business environment. Introspectus does this by testing the effectiveness of the organisation’s Application Control policies on all endpoints daily.

Introspectus confirms the effectiveness of an organisation’s Application Control by running tests for executables, software libraries, scripts, and installers (including hash-based) and producing a maturity score against ACSC’s Essential Eight Maturity Model.

Introspectus generates real-time reports on the Maturity Level of an organisation’s Application Controls, the information found, and any possible threats to user accounts.

Introspectus Assessor Application Control Reports

Automated Daily Tests

Introspectus performs over 60 tests on each endpoint every day to provide organisations with confidence that their Application Control policies are effective.

Device Audit Report

Introspectus reports confirm that Application Control is deployed to each endpoint and identifies any endpoints where the policies have not been implemented.

Real-Time Reporting

Introspectus lets organisations confidently report to their management/board that they are continuously protecting all devices.

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.