Application allowlist and denylist

Use the Application allowlist and Application denylist functionality in SAM Core on Snow Atlas to monitor usage of, for example, unwanted software.

SAM Core gathers data on the applications that are installed and used in your IT environment. If you have applications that are not approved for installation and usage, you can add them to the application denylist. In this way, you can monitor potential use of unwanted software, like game and poker applications. If you have applications that are approved, you can add them to the corresponding application allowlist.

The approved and non-approved applications are automatically identified based on rules that you create in SAM Core. You can create the rules based on, for example, the application name, type, or manufacturer. For the application allowlist, there is an optional setting that adds a selected number of the most recent versions of the application on the allowlist. In this way, you can create rules that require no maintenance.

note

The denylist overrides the allowlist. This means that if an application is caught by rules for both the allowlist and the denylist, the system will automatically remove the application from the allowlist.

Characteristics

If you have created rules for an application denylist, installation or usage of an application on that list will result in an alert. If you have created rules for an application allowlist, installation or usage of an application not on that list will also result in an alert.

For an application on your allowlist, the information message Allowlisted appears on the application details page. Similarly, the information message Denylisted appears on the details page of an application on your denylist.

When you use the allowlist and denylist functionality, the approved and non-approved applications are shown with a background color in the user interface of SAM Core. The background colors are shown on the Applications page of both the computer where the application is installed and the user who has run the application.

Scenario	Background color
No application denylist is specified. The setting Enable allowlist for applications is not selected in Settings|License Management.	All applications have a white background.
An application denylist is specified. The setting Enable allowlist for applications is not selected in Settings|License Management.	The applications on the denylist have a red background. All other applications have a white background.
An application denylist is specified. The setting Enable allowlist for applications is selected in Settings|License Management.	The applications on the denylist have a red background. The applications on the allowlist have a white background. All other applications have a gray background.

To see all of your approved or non-approved applications, you can do the following:

• On the Applications page, select Column selector and then add the column Allowlisted or Denylisted to facilitate filtering.

• Use the report All applications and add one of the report criteria Allowlisted or Denylisted.

• Use the reports Denylisted applications per computer and Denylisted applications per user.