As operating systems become increasingly complex and administrators become more comfortable obtaining utilities from a variety of sources (including the public Internet), there is an increasing risk of inadvertently damaging important system files or state through user error or by executing malicious code (i.e., Trojans and other malicious software, or malware).

Modern operating systems such as Windows Server 2008 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) help protect systems by requiring explicit user action before the OS performs restricted tasks. In Windows Server 2008 (and Windows Vista), the User Account Control subsystem provides this kind of system protection. This article compares Windows Server 2008 UAC to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 sudo Command