Microsoft has decided it’s time to put its foot down and do something about all of those annoying “potentially unwanted applications” (PUAs) that clog up Windows machines on corporate networks. To that end, Redmond is now offering a new ‘PUA protection’ feature in its System Center Endpoint Protection (SCEP) and Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) tools.

The new feature simply scans for PUA signatures, a list of which is regularly updated with Microsoft’s anti-malware definition updates and cloud protection.

Most Windows users will have come across PUAs at some point in their lives – basically, they are programs which, once installed, go about hijacking Web browser search settings, injecting advertisements into Web traffic, deploy other programs without the user’s knowledge, or solicit payment for services based on false claims.

Such applications can “increase the risk of your network being infected with malware, cause malware infections to be harder to identify among the noise, and can waste helpdesk, IT and user time cleaning up the applications,” wrote Microsoft’s security team in the Malware Protection Center blog.

System administrators will need to deploy PUA protection tools for the specific anti-malware product their organization uses through the registry, as a Group Policy setting.

Redmond’s security boffins say it’s best to deploy this feature along with a corporate policy that describes what PUAs are and prohibits them being installed. Microsoft further recommends organizations inform their employees that PUA protection will be deployed in advance, in anticipation that a number of applications which once worked will suddenly be blocked.

For those networks which anticipate they already have a large number of PUA installations, Microsoft recommends they roll out PUA protection in stages to see if any apps detected are a ‘false positive’, so exclusions can be added for them.

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