User Account Control (UAC)

User Account Control is the Windows feature that splits an administrator logon into two tokens: a filtered standard token for everyday work, and a full admin token that has to be asked for. The familiar dimmed prompt is that ask. A standard user who is not a local admin never gets the full token. They get a credential box instead.

UAC is not least privilege and it is not privileged access management. Those are the program. UAC is the consent step on one operating system. Turning the slider to never notify, or disabling the feature, removes the prompt and leaves silent elevation. That is a weaker machine, not a quieter one.

Published bypasses exist. Treat the prompt as friction, not a boundary. The control that holds is a standard user with no local admin, just-in-time elevation, and a separate privileged account. Pair it with multi-factor authentication on the admin path.