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Remove the ability to reboot servers from helpdesk user's.
What is your recommendations or the best way to remove the ability to reboot servers from helpdesk technicians, analysts etc?
Even if it is on a per server basis I would like to know your thoughts.
Even if it is on a per server basis I would like to know your thoughts.
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I would deploy a GPO to remove and prevent access to the shutdown, restart, sleep, and hibernate commands
You would do it through the per computer configuration, however when you add the GPO you would apply the security settings to a group so you could apply the permissions to a particular set of users, leaving your power users the capability to reboot ect as required
To allow power users to reboot their workstations, make sure your Computers and Servers are in different OUs and link the GPO I mentioned to the Servers OU.
What I would do is create GPO for the for the helpdesk techs and under administrative templates remove the ability to shutdown or restart. See below.
Just so you know, that particular policy doesn't prevent them from being able to shut down the computer. It just removes the GUI controls to do so. Users with only that policy set can still use the shutdown command in CMD to turn off or reboot the computer. To block that, you have to ensure that they are not a member of a group that has the user rights I mentioned earlier.
Adam, your right but you can also remove the run command in that group as well. Or you can edit the security properties of the shutdown.exe and deny it for any user you want.
Neither of which also removes the ability to perform a remote reboot on a server or workstation from a computer that doesn't have those options removed. All of those methods are cosmetic changes that don't actually remove the permission to shutdown systems. In essence, they are providing security through obscurity. The proper way to set the permission is to limit the User Rights assigned to the technicians. It takes more thought and consideration to configure systems that way, but it is significantly more secure because it completely removes the ability to shut down a computer without physical access.
Hey Adam, just so you know... I agree with you and had I saw your post before I posted, I wouldn't have posted my solution but geeze you don't have to be so snarky dude.
A helpdesk user doesn't need for a lot of tasks to logon to the server, they can do all of the management through RSAT tools.
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If you want to control this with a GPO, deploy a GPO that only includes the users that need those rights listed in the User Rights Assignment node in the GPO, link the GPO, then either set it to be enforced or move it to the top of the list on the OUs that have your servers in them.