Five best practices for securing Active Directory service accounts

Windows Active Directory (AD) service accounts are prime cyber-attack targets due to their elevated privileges and automated/continuous access to important systems. Windows Administrators should therefore implement strong security measures crucial for protecting AD environments from security compromises. This article outlines five best practices to help secure your AD service accounts and reduce the risk of compromise by malicious actors. What are service accounts? AD service accounts are specialized accounts designed for running applications and services on Windows Servers. To support software-specific functions, service accounts require elevated permissions to manage the installation of applications and core services, and are often granted extensive access to the operating system infrastructure for dependent applications to function properly. This expansive access level makes service accounts especially attractive targets for malicious actors looking to gain a foothold into criti ... Read full article.