Why administrator privileges

The following provides high-level guidance on what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate use of Administrator Access. Administrator Access to University computing resources should only be used for official University business. While the University Computing Policy permits reasonable personal use of computing resources, this is restricted to non-administrative activities. In situations where it is unclear whether a particular action is appropriate, and within the scope of current job responsibilities, the situation should be discussed with management.

Users with Administrative Access may be required to perform some security activities such as software or operating system patching and updates, as well as monitoring for unusual activity. If a security incident is suspected, no additional actions should be taken before consulting with the Information Security Office by email iso-ir andrew. In addition to those activities deemed inappropriate in the University Computing Policy , the following constitute inappropriate use of Administrator Access to University computing resources unless documented and approved by management:.

The following constitutes inappropriate use of Administrator Access to University computing resources under any circumstances, regardless of whether there is management approval:. Malware could never affect the computer in the first place without admin rights.

There is no way of controlling administrators with Group Policy. They can do what they want, full stop. Removing admin rights and running with standard users removes this risk immediately. Your network is only as secure as its weakest link. One computer on the domain running admin rights is a hole that compromises the entire network.

I demonstrate how admins can inject bait into a PC using a security gap, run with the highest privileges and bypass UAC to gain access to the whole network.

Sami has been working with and teaching OS troubleshooting, management, and security since He is the 11th most followed person in his field in Finland.

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Partners Support Search. Privileged Password Management Discover, manage, audit, and monitor privileged accounts and credentials. Secure Remote Access Centrally manage remote access for service desks, vendors, and operators. Remote Support Privileged Remote Access. Administrative privileges are associated with your user account. Administrator users are allowed to have these privileges while Standard users are not. Without administrative privileges you will not be able to install software.

You should not use administrative privileges all of the time, because you might accidentally change something you did not intend to like delete a needed system file, for example. In summary, administrative privileges allow you to change important parts of your system when needed, but prevent you from doing it accidentally. A user with administrative privileges is sometimes called a super user. This is simply because that user has more privileges than normal users. Requiring users to have administrative privileges before important system changes are made is useful because it helps to prevent your system from being broken, intentionally or unintentionally.

If you had administrative privileges all of the time, you might accidentally change an important file, or run an application which changes something important by mistake. Only getting administrative privileges temporarily, when you need them, reduces the risk of these mistakes happening.

Only certain trusted users should be allowed to have administrative privileges. This is useful from a security standpoint. Got a comment? Spotted an error?