I need to convince my internal IT department to give my new team of developers admin rights to our own PCs. They seem to think this will create some security risk to the network. Can anyone explain why this would be? What are the risks? What do IT departments usually set up for developers who need ability to install software on their PCs.


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At every place I have worked (as a contract developer) developers are given local admin rights on their desktops. 

The reasons are:

1) Developers toolsets are often updated very regularly.  Graphics libraries, code helpers, visual studio updates; they end up having updates coming out almost weekly that need to be installed.  Desktop support usually gets very tired of getting 20 tickets every week to go install updated software on all the dev machines so they just give the devs admin rights to do it themselves.

2) Debugging / Testing tools sometimes need admin rights to be able to function.  No admin access means developers can’t do their job of debugging code. Managers don't like that.

3) Developer tend to be more security conscious and so are less likely to run/install dangerous malware. Obviously, it still happens but all in all developers can usually be trusted to have higher level access to be able to do their work.
