asked on Restrict Domain Admins From Changing Built-In Administrator Account Password
Hello Everyone,
Our company does IT Outsourcing, as such we have many different businesses, users, and servers to look after on a day-to-day basis. The problem that I am currently faced with is that as we grow we are requiring more techs to handle the workload, which is good but requires me to rethink our security policies, in that, if someone has to be let go, or quits, then instead of having a few passwords to change like in your typical in house IT department, we have many passwords to change, across, many servers, many clients, and many devices. I've already worked out how to take care of most of the issues, such as network scanners that have the admin password for authentication to shares, but the main one I'm faced with right now is how do I make it so that my techs have the access they need to do work on the servers and preform installations and other things on local workstations, but cannot change the built-in administrator password. This way if one of them is let go or quits, all I have to do is go through each server and change the tech admin account password since that's the only admin password they'll be privy to. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.
Our company does IT Outsourcing, as such we have many different businesses, users, and servers to look after on a day-to-day basis. The problem that I am currently faced with is that as we grow we are requiring more techs to handle the workload, which is good but requires me to rethink our security policies, in that, if someone has to be let go, or quits, then instead of having a few passwords to change like in your typical in house IT department, we have many passwords to change, across, many servers, many clients, and many devices. I've already worked out how to take care of most of the issues, such as network scanners that have the admin password for authentication to shares, but the main one I'm faced with right now is how do I make it so that my techs have the access they need to do work on the servers and preform installations and other things on local workstations, but cannot change the built-in administrator password. This way if one of them is let go or quits, all I have to do is go through each server and change the tech admin account password since that's the only admin password they'll be privy to. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.
Windows Server 2008Windows Server 2003SBS
Last Comment
ctagle
ASKER
Thank you for the reply. That should work nicely for simplifying the process of changing the passwords, but I didn't see anything about restricting domain admin accounts from being able to change the password on the built-in admin account or on an account I specify. I can restrict the gpo I think and not tell them the password for the built-in admin account, but then they can just go into AD and change the password right? Or am I missing something?
If the users need to be domain admins then you cannot stop them from changing the password. If they do not require domain admin rights then you can use delegation of control and restrict what your users can do. You can always audit password changes from the security logs on the domain controllers.
You might also be able to use the deny permission on the account for password reset (I would try this in a test environment first).
Will.
You might also be able to use the deny permission on the account for password reset (I would try this in a test environment first).
Will.
ASKER
ah ok, is there a way that I can give them access to the admin functions, such as AD, exchange, backups, share management, ability to install programs and updates on workstations (authenticating through UAC or logging on as the domain user they are assigned), etc... without making them a domain admin? If so then I think I could possibly figure something out, I haven't had much success in the past though with domain accounts having admin priveleges on workstations unless they are domain admins.
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ASKER
Thanks for the replies, I'll be trying the delegation of control wizards once my mock up server comes in. Should hopefully be this week, i'll let you know how it turns out.
ASKER
Didn't really have much a chance to try this stuff out, and there's no sense in leaving a question open, I will look into this more in depth now that I have a vsphere host in place that I can setup mock up vms on. Thank you for the information.
As for Local Admin accounts you can use Group Policy Perferences to accomplish this and reset local admin accounts.
You can find the details at the following link.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/b1e94909-bb0b-4e10-83a0-cd7812dfe073/change-local-administrator-password-thru-gpo?forum=winserverGP
Will.