Portsmouth, N.H.-based BeyondTrust Corp. said Monday that it has ported its Privilege Manager software from Windows 2000 and XP to Vista, including 64-bit versions of the Microsoft Corp. operating system. Privilege Manager relies on the same "principle of least privilege" behind Vista's new User Account Control (UAC) feature.

In earlier versions of Windows, all users by default run as administrators, a move that can create security holes. UAC lets standard users know whenever an administrator-level action is about to take place, and it allows them to choose whether to go ahead. That has led to user complaints about UAC's intrusive repetitiveness, which they argue can be alleviated only with the drastic step of bypassing standard user mode for administrator mode. But making that change reduces their level of security back to XP levels.

Rival security vendor Symantec Corp. claims that , and Apple Inc. parodies UAC in its commercials.

Marco Peretti, chief technology officer of BeyondTrust, sympathizes with Microsoft, which he said does not want consumer users to customize UAC for fear that they could increase their own security risks.

Privilege Manager enables all applications -- whether in XP or Vista -- to run without administrator-level access. It also gets around Vista by letting administrators set user rights and privileges that are transparent to the end user. This way, users can still enjoy UAC-level protection in Windows 2000, XP and Vista, but without the pop-up dialog boxes.