Sometimes you need to regularly runas an admin in Windows, but you might not necessarily want to give the user the local or domain admin password or save it in a cleartext file or shortcut or run over to type it in when needed. These are some options for secure ways of performing a runas. I’ve once used CPAU and it worked rather well. I had to give a SQL DBA access to production SQL servers and allow him to access other servers through admin shares via Enterprise Manager. Rather than give him a domain admin account or mess with permissions or store it in cleartext in a file or shortcut where he could look it up if he wanted to, I made a “secure” shortcut using CPAU. Pretty slick, and while it may have holes, it likely will stop any insiders from easily obtaining the credentials. This can be used for lesser instances like a user’s program that might need some admin rights somewhere and not run otherwise.

Thie page has a bunch of choices for situations where runas needs to be secure.