Many organizations have chosen to allow users administrator privileges on their PCs. Enforcing passwords on screen savers in an environment like this can prove very difficult.

In recent years, as employees have become more proficient in PC usage, IT departments have relaxed their policies. Many IT departments have used granting administrator privileges to large portions of their employee base simply to cut down on the flood of help desk calls associated with employees installing software on their own PC.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone into organizations as a consultant, needing to install a program like Microsoft Project and wound up an Administrator on the clients PC, simply because it was easier for the IT Help Desk to do so.

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What people should be doing for securing Windows for desktop single signon is enforcing password protected screensaver timeout settings. We wrote up a post awhile back explaining how to do this (it’s standard Windows functionality).

http://blog.greysparling.com/2006/11/automating-password-protected.html

This is actually a better way of securing people’s desktops since it protects things like email, downloaded documents, etc, not just their PeopleSoft login.