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The Application Control story has its roots in an observation made by the founders several years ago. After being involved in Mobile device management they noticed that "mobile devices" required far less management to be kept secure compared to the devices they'd been managing for ages. Some debate amongst them quickly lead to 2 key points. One, the name mobile is ill-chosen, a laptop is as mobile as a smartphone or tablet. Two, it's not the mobility that decides the amount of management required to keep a device secure. The thing that impacts the amount of effort required to keep a device secure depends on the number of sources that can be used to introduce code that runs on these devices.

As a result they coined the terms Open Devices vs Closed devices back in 2015. An open device has numerous, or even an infinite amount of sources that can introduce code. Closed devices have a limited, often just one way of introducing code to run on the platform. This somewhat abstract concept becomes a whole lot more clear when linking it to actual devices and platforms. As a result they defined Windows and MacOS devices as open, as they can run code downloaded from anywhere. Whereas IOS & Android are considered closed devices as code can only be injected through their respective stores.

Application Control ties into this as the founders set out on making sure that there was a convenient way to limit the sources that could introduce code into a traditional Windows device. They were and are convinced that doing so would reduce the amount of management needed to keep these devices secure would be drastically reduced. The Windows platform contains functionality to handle this with Applocker and Windows Application Control. Again, after a number of years the founders identified that the naming that was in use was somewhat misleading. Both Applocker and Windows Defender Application Control contain references to the term applications, but neither of them really allows you to define allow lists on an application level, they require extensive management of rules that allow files, filepaths, certificates etc..... Our founders promise is that Application Control will allow you to build Allowlists by specifying which applications can actually run in your environment. Drastically simplifying the effort required to build your allowlist and granting you control over the sources that can introduce code into your organization.

The aim of all of this is to make sure ransomware on App Control managed platforms is in line on what is seen on closed (IOS/Android) device as opposed to what is seen on open devices