January 16, 2025 By Sergiu Gatlan
Microsoft has expanded its Windows 11 administrator protection tests, allowing Insiders to enable the security feature from the Windows Security settings.
First introduced in October in a preview build for Windows 11 Insiders in the Canary Channel, admin protection uses a hidden, just-in-time elevation mechanism and Windows Hello authentication prompts that only unlock admin rights when needed to block access to critical system resources.
Once enabled, it ensures that logged-in admin users have only standard user permissions and are asked to authenticate via Windows Hello using a PIN or biometric method when installing new apps or trying to change the registry.
These authentication prompts should be more challenging to circumvent than the Window User Account Control (UAC) security feature to prevent malware and attackers from compromising the system by accessing critical resources.
"With administrator protection enabled, the prompt requesting the user's authorization for elevating untrusted and unsigned applications now comes with expanded color-coded regions which will now extend down over the app description," the Windows Insider team said on Thursday.
