Blocking Sharepoint Designer – Highlevel Overview

There’s been a lot of buzz going around that Sharepoint Designer will be free in April.  This got me a bit worried as an administrator for our Sharepoint environment.  I’d like to have this user restricted as it can be potentially dangerous if permissions are not properly set.

I was talking with a technician about what would be done to block Sharepoint Designer from running.  Here is a high level view of how we would do it if we proceed down this path.

What would be done is a Group Policy would be created to block the exe or hash from running.  We run a blacklist of malware exes, so SPD would be added to that list.  We then would create an OU in Active Directory that would not inherit this group policy.  This would allow us to create a list of users in AD that should have access to the software.  This would allow us to have strict control over who can use it for design purposes.

We are still discussing whether or not we are going to implement this in our environment.  I am definately for it until we have an idea of the numbers of people interested in using it.

Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Stumble This Post