What are privileged accounts?

[Anon Anon]

Hello All,

 

Starting this discussion to demystify what qualifies an account to be Privileged one.

My understanding was only accounts without face or accounts that are common/shared are privileged accounts.

Can real faced/human account qualified to be an Privileged account?

[Renato_Pioker]

Hi Manickaraj.

 

I believe that the first thought is that only those accounts that do not belong to an individual are considered as privileged accounts. However, from a Security point of view, I believe that we should consider as privileged account any account that holds administration privileges, or that are used by sensitive systems. I have seen companies using named accounts as service accounts, for example. In this case, the named account can be considered as a privileged account - however, it will not be shared to others (what does not mean that it should not be protected).

 

The fact that it might be a named account does not mean that the user that holds the account should know its password, if the named account has specific privileges. This is something that must be analyzed case by case, there is no "one answer fits all" for it.

 

I hope it helps.

 

Regards,

Pioker