13th and 14th February, 2026
Kaapelitehdas, Helsinki Finland
Admin Rights are not Human Rights
Sami Laiho
Contrary to what many users seem to think, Admin Rights are not Human Rights, but rather the biggest problem when it comes to companies getting breached. Join this session to hear from the world leading expert on this field, Sami Laiho, about how to remove admin rights without hindering usability.
Even the NT 3.1 User Guide states, that in Windows, there is no security if you give people local admin rights. Local admin rights give you the ability to bypass all company Group Policy / MDM -settings, take any logged-on users’ identity, read/delete any files on the computer even with Deny ACLs, and probably the worst – the ability to breach the rest of the company systems.
Most people say that: “if I don’t have admin rights I can’t fix my computer” – No, in reality, it’s: “if you don’t have admin rights you can’t break your computer”. Taking away end-user admin rights can lower the amount of Helpdesk tickets by 75%, and at the same time mitigate 85% of security vulnerabilities in the Windows OS.
Most users think that this hinders usability and is not possible for certain old apps, laptop users, or devs. Sami has successfully taken away admin rights from all of these, in companies ranging from a single-person to a company with more than half a million users.
Even the NT 3.1 User Guide states, that in Windows, there is no security if you give people local admin rights. Local admin rights give you the ability to bypass all company Group Policy / MDM -settings, take any logged-on users’ identity, read/delete any files on the computer even with Deny ACLs, and probably the worst – the ability to breach the rest of the company systems.
Most people say that: “if I don’t have admin rights I can’t fix my computer” – No, in reality, it’s: “if you don’t have admin rights you can’t break your computer”. Taking away end-user admin rights can lower the amount of Helpdesk tickets by 75%, and at the same time mitigate 85% of security vulnerabilities in the Windows OS.
Most users think that this hinders usability and is not possible for certain old apps, laptop users, or devs. Sami has successfully taken away admin rights from all of these, in companies ranging from a single-person to a company with more than half a million users.
Sami Laiho
Sami Laiho is one of the world’s leading professionals in the Windows OS and Security. Sami has been working with and teaching OS troubleshooting, management, and security since 1995.
Sami has been auditing and implementing security solutions, specializing in Principle of Least Privilege, Application Control and Privileged Access Workstations, since 2002. Sami has deployed solutions for companies with between 1-550000 endpoints.
Sami currently works as a Chief Research Officer at Adminize.com.
Since 2019 Sami has been chosen by TiVi-magazine as one of the top 100 influencers in IT in Finland. He is in the TOP10 most followed people in his field in Finland.
At Ignite 2018, Sami’s “Behind the Scenes: How to build a conference winning session” and “Sami Laiho: 45 Life Hacks of Windows OS in 45 minutes” sessions were ranked as #1 and #2 out of 1708 sessions!! This was the first time in the history of the conference that anyone has been able to do this.
Before that, at Ignite 2017, the world’s biggest Microsoft event, Sami was evaluated as the Best External Speaker! Also, Sami’s sessions were evaluated as the Best session in TechEd North America, Europe and Australia in 2014, and Nordic Infrastructure Conference in 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 (Conference Keynote).
