I didnt know cronfile abilities were hard to find either, then was told about it. So we now allow cron rights for users, but we also set limits on how much resource a script can use....for that fact, you can even set limits on how much resource a virtual account can use. Either way, it stops runaways dead in their tracks. So it's pretty safe as long as a cron is run as a user (not root) and you have extra precautions in place.