Application Control Buyers’ Guide 2025

State of the market: Application control solutions give security teams control over application execution across their network, minimizing the risk of end users running unauthorized and potentially malicious applications.

• The global endpoint security market was valued at USD 16.22 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.4% by 2030. The software segment held over 80% of this market in the US in 2019, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of >7% by 2026.
• The growth of the software segment is being driven by an increasing demand for scalable protection against malicious files and applications. 
  • 31% of organizations say they have been targeted by malware attacks, 23% by Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, 20% by credential theft, and 21% have experienced application misconfiguration.

Why trust us: We’ve researched, demoed, and tested several leading application control solutions, spoken to organizations of all sizes about their app control challenges and the features that are most useful to them, and interviewed executives from leading providers in the application control and wider endpoint security space.

You can find our product reviews, interviews, and Top 10 guides to the best application control products on the market in our Endpoint Security Hub.

Our recommendations: Before we jump into the details, here are our top tips on how to get the most out of your application control solution and make sure you’re choosing the right one for your business:

• For maximum security: Choose a solution that allows you to configure identity-based application controls, i.e., controls that allow or restrict access based on the user/user group’s title or role. For example, you can grant higher access permissions for Admins than Normal End Users, and you can prevent users on your marketing team from accessing HR software.
• For streamlined deployment: Before you adopt an application control solution, identify all your critical apps to ensure that no business activity is affected during configuration.
• For happy end users: Regularly check your allow/deny lists to make sure they’re up to date. This will not only minimize your risk of a security breach, but it can also help reduce end user frustration by ensuring the apps they need to do their jobs are always available.

How application control solutions work: Application control solutions are typically deployed via an agent installed on each end user’s endpoint. Once the agent is installed, you can manage the solution remotely via a web- or cloud-based admin console.

Different application control tools offer different features, depending on the industry and size of organization to which they’re tailored. That said, once deployed, they typically enable you to:

• Create allow/deny lists for application installation and execution.
  • Most tools also have pre-defined denylists that cover non-work-related apps, such as gaming platforms. 
• Define application-specific policies that allow, block, or restrict application traffic (e.g., blocking specific file types or categories). 
• Place identity-specific restrictions on which apps or app functions individual users or user groups can access.
• Monitor which apps have been accessed by whom. Some app control tools also provide insights into whether users carry out certain actions within applications, such as process or privilege escalation.

Benefits of application control solutions: There are three main use cases for implementing an application control tool:

1. Improve your security posture
   • By creating an allow list of pre-approved applications, you prevent end users from running malicious software or unauthorized (and therefore unmanaged and unpatched) software that could be more vulnerable to zero-day exploits.
   • Some application control solutions also allow you to define access privileges for users (i.e., users can only access the apps they need for their job) and applications (i.e. apps can run only with necessary permissions). This can help you reduce the risk of an attacker accessing your most critical data, even if they do successfully access or compromise an app either via an exploit or credential theft. 
2. Ensure compliance with regulatory requirements
   • Application control solutions offer granular logging and reporting capabilities, which can help you provide detailed records of application usage and user activity for compliance audits. 
   • App control tools can also help you ensure that your organization is only using applications that comply with any regulatory standards relevant to your industry.
3. Improve operational efficiency
   • Implementing an application control solution centralizes and automates lots of the processes involved in managing approved software across your organization, greatly reducing the amount of admin your team has to do.
   • Restricting the execution of non-essential applications can also enhance system performance by freeing up resources.

Common application control challenges: There are a few common challenges that you might come across when implementing an application control solution. Here’s what they are and how to overcome them:

1. Finding the balance between security and usability: We recommend taking the approach of restricting non-required apps, i.e., starting with 0 apps blocked, rather than all apps blocked. This means that your users will be able to access all the apps they need to do their jobs, which in turn will help minimize frustration.
2. Keeping on top of updates: We recommend keeping a log of any new applications you add to your environment and performing regular audits to help you stay on top of application updates and ensure that no app slips under your radar.
3. User frustration caused by role-based access policies: We recommend looking for a solution that allows end users to request “just-in-time” or “on-demand” access to apps that they only need to use once in a while. When using this feature, it’s important that your solution alerts you immediately if a user requests access, so you can review the request and grant or deny the access as quickly as possible.

Best application control providers: Our team of software analysts and researchers has put together a shortlist of the best providers of application control solutions, as well as adjacent lists covering similar topics:

• The Top 9 Application Control Solutions
• The Top 11 Endpoint Security Solutions For Business
• The Top 7 Unified Endpoint Security (UES) Solutions

Features checklist: When comparing application control solutions, Expert Insights recommends looking for the following features: 

1. Allow/denylisting: You should be able to define and automatically enforce lists of approved or blocked applications. Some tools also offer pre-defined denylists of non-workplace-related apps, which can help speed up deployment. 
2. Identity-based controls: You should be able to restrict users’ or user groups’ access to applications. These controls are typically based on the user’s role within the organization. 
3. Application-based controls: You should be able to allow or block application traffic, e.g., by blocking specific file types.
4. Just-in-time access: You should be able to grant one-off access to users on demand, in real time, to apps they need to use infrequently but not on a day-to-day basis. When you grant such a request, the app should update that user’s access permissions in real time.
5. Centralized management: The solution should provide a single, centrally-accessible interface from which you can create, manage, and enforce application control policies and access logs and reports.
6. Automatic updates: The solution should automatically carry out regular updates for application databases, trust lists, and policies, to ensure all apps are covered.
7. Audit logging and reporting: The solution should monitor and log application usage and execution, providing reports into which users are accessing which apps, when, and for how long. Some solutions even provide details on users’ actions within those applications, e.g., service requests and process escalation. 
8. Real-time alerting: The solution should alert you in real-time if a user tries to execute an unauthorized app.
9. Integration: Your solution should integrate seamlessly with your other endpoint protection, antivirus, or Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools to help block known malicious software. 

Future trends: There are two key trends that we expect to see in the application control market in the near future.

First, we expect more application control solutions to embrace recent advancements in AI and machine learning to:

• Effectively identify malicious applications and potential threats
• Adapt policies based on operational needs or shifts in the threat landscape
• Grant or deny on-demand access requests based on contextual information (e.g., the user’s historical interactions with that app)

Second, we expect app control to converge with Unified Endpoint Management (UEM). UEM software enables you to monitor, manage, and secure all of your business’ endpoints consistently, via a single interface. That includes all device and operating system types, BYOD and corporate-issued devices, as well as on-prem and remote devices.

It’s currently relatively complex to merge or integrate application control and UEM solutions as the process requires a significant amount of configuration. Converging the two into a single, holistic platform would alleviate this complexity.  It would also allow security teams to: 

• Manage app and device security from a single interface, strengthening device security while maintaining ease of management
• Enforce consistent security and compliance policies across all devices and apps, whether they’re managed through on-prem or mobile ecosystems
• Use the UEM analytics capabilities to analyze application behavior and identify suspicious activity in real-time

Some leading UEM providers, such as Microsoft, VMWare, and IBM, have already incorporated advanced application control features into their platforms, but this convergence is something we expect to see more of in the next few years.

Further reading: You can find all our articles on application control solutions in our Endpoint Security Hub.

Want to jump right in? Here are a few articles we think you’ll enjoy: 

• Shortlist: The Top 9 Application Control Solutions
• Interview: How Application Security And Controls Automation Can Enable Business Performance
• Blog: How To Recover From A Ransomware Attack