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Need limited domain admin rights user account.

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Subject Author Date
Need limited domain admin rights user account. Mike Bailey 08-08-2005
Posted by Mike Bailey on August 8, 2005, 2:33 pm
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I'm a new manager in my comapny and am "tighten" up some of the securtiy
here. The domain administrator username/password is used too freely here
and has not changed in years. I want to change that, but at the same time,
need to give one of my staff most of the privileges she has under the
administrator. What I *don't* want her to be able to do is take ownership
of folders, or change the domain administrator password. In our office,
most users don't have local admins right to their pc's, so we log in as the
domain admin to make certain changes. She will still need this ability. I
thought about just creating another user it and adding it as a local admin -
but that's jsut something else to maintain one each machine. I'd rather
create a domain user that has the above restirictions, but still has other
admin rights.

Any suggestions on how to create this?

Thanks,
Mike




Posted by Roger Abell on August 8, 2005, 11:24 pm
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One does not "revoke" rights from a Domain Admin.
One can try for some capabilities, but it will be imperfect and
they can walk around it if they wanted.

Rather, the way to go is to define what capabilities a person
should have and then create an account with those grants of
user rights, NTFS permissions, AD delegations, etc.
The best way is to make the grants to a new custom group, and
give the person(s) new accounts that are members of this group,
in addition to their normal day-to-day use account.

Maintaining a WkstnAdmin custom group as a member of the
machine local administrators group should not be a problem.
At least, if it is then keeping Domain Admins as members of
the machine local Administrators group would likely also be.

--
Roger Abell
Microsoft MVP (Windows Security)
MCSE (W2k3,W2k,Nt4) MCDBA
> I'm a new manager in my comapny and am "tighten" up some of the securtiy
> here. The domain administrator username/password is used too freely here
> and has not changed in years. I want to change that, but at the same
time,
> need to give one of my staff most of the privileges she has under the
> administrator. What I *don't* want her to be able to do is take ownership
> of folders, or change the domain administrator password. In our office,
> most users don't have local admins right to their pc's, so we log in as
the
> domain admin to make certain changes. She will still need this ability.
I
> thought about just creating another user it and adding it as a local
admin -
> but that's jsut something else to maintain one each machine. I'd rather
> create a domain user that has the above restirictions, but still has other
> admin rights.
>
> Any suggestions on how to create this?
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
>




Posted by Mike Bailey on August 9, 2005, 1:32 pm
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I basically understand what you are saying, but yet I don't understand it or
rather what to do. The last paragraph is also hard to understand from the
wording. Are you saying there to create a custom group that would be added
to each workstation with local administration rights? Part of my problem is
that I understand the concept of creating a group to give special
permissions, and then adding users into that group. I just don't know what,
or how to give most of the permissions that a Domain Admin would have. I
guess what would be nice is if someone could say "to create a super user
that can't take ownership of folders, can't change security settings on
folders, can't change Administrator passwords, here is what you would do..."

Mike


> One does not "revoke" rights from a Domain Admin.
> One can try for some capabilities, but it will be imperfect and
> they can walk around it if they wanted.
>
> Rather, the way to go is to define what capabilities a person
> should have and then create an account with those grants of
> user rights, NTFS permissions, AD delegations, etc.
> The best way is to make the grants to a new custom group, and
> give the person(s) new accounts that are members of this group,
> in addition to their normal day-to-day use account.
>
> Maintaining a WkstnAdmin custom group as a member of the
> machine local administrators group should not be a problem.
> At least, if it is then keeping Domain Admins as members of
> the machine local Administrators group would likely also be.
>
> --
> Roger Abell
> Microsoft MVP (Windows Security)
> MCSE (W2k3,W2k,Nt4) MCDBA
>> I'm a new manager in my comapny and am "tighten" up some of the securtiy
>> here. The domain administrator username/password is used too freely here
>> and has not changed in years. I want to change that, but at the same
> time,
>> need to give one of my staff most of the privileges she has under the
>> administrator. What I *don't* want her to be able to do is take
>> ownership
>> of folders, or change the domain administrator password. In our office,
>> most users don't have local admins right to their pc's, so we log in as
> the
>> domain admin to make certain changes. She will still need this ability.
> I
>> thought about just creating another user it and adding it as a local
> admin -
>> but that's jsut something else to maintain one each machine. I'd rather
>> create a domain user that has the above restirictions, but still has
>> other
>> admin rights.
>>
>> Any suggestions on how to create this?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mike
>>
>>
>
>




Posted by Roger Abell on August 10, 2005, 3:36 am
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Part of what I was trying to say was to first, figure out what it is that
you do want the custom group to be able to do.
I guess you do in fact want these accounts to be able to do everything
except for "can't take ownership of folders, can't change security settings
on folders, can't change Administrator passwords"

I was thinking that you would have a shorter, and precise list of what
the account should be able to do, in which case one can work forward
toward filling those needs with grants and delegations.

Given what you have stated, I do not see a way to do that.
The first two of the three things that should not be possible I can
see how to take away from Administrators and instead grant only
to some new group SpecialAdmins that should keep the capabilities.
The second would be extremely labor filled to do.
The last however, not changing pwds of admins (but being able to
change pwd of other accounts) is not obtainable in local machines
when working backwards from Administrators.

Anyway, it is vitually certain that restricting Administrators will
result in some of those admins finding the ways to get around or
remove the restrictions.
You need to go the other direction and list all that you do want
the people to be able to do.
--
Roger Abell
Microsoft MVP (Windows Security)
MCSE (W2k3,W2k,Nt4) MCDBA
> I basically understand what you are saying, but yet I don't understand it
or
> rather what to do. The last paragraph is also hard to understand from the
> wording. Are you saying there to create a custom group that would be
added
> to each workstation with local administration rights? Part of my problem
is
> that I understand the concept of creating a group to give special
> permissions, and then adding users into that group. I just don't know
what,
> or how to give most of the permissions that a Domain Admin would have. I
> guess what would be nice is if someone could say "to create a super user
> that can't take ownership of folders, can't change security settings on
> folders, can't change Administrator passwords, here is what you would
do..."
>
> Mike
>
>
> > One does not "revoke" rights from a Domain Admin.
> > One can try for some capabilities, but it will be imperfect and
> > they can walk around it if they wanted.
> >
> > Rather, the way to go is to define what capabilities a person
> > should have and then create an account with those grants of
> > user rights, NTFS permissions, AD delegations, etc.
> > The best way is to make the grants to a new custom group, and
> > give the person(s) new accounts that are members of this group,
> > in addition to their normal day-to-day use account.
> >
> > Maintaining a WkstnAdmin custom group as a member of the
> > machine local administrators group should not be a problem.
> > At least, if it is then keeping Domain Admins as members of
> > the machine local Administrators group would likely also be.
> >
> > --
> > Roger Abell
> > Microsoft MVP (Windows Security)
> > MCSE (W2k3,W2k,Nt4) MCDBA
> >> I'm a new manager in my comapny and am "tighten" up some of the
securtiy
> >> here. The domain administrator username/password is used too freely
here
> >> and has not changed in years. I want to change that, but at the same
> > time,
> >> need to give one of my staff most of the privileges she has under the
> >> administrator. What I *don't* want her to be able to do is take
> >> ownership
> >> of folders, or change the domain administrator password. In our
office,
> >> most users don't have local admins right to their pc's, so we log in as
> > the
> >> domain admin to make certain changes. She will still need this
ability.
> > I
> >> thought about just creating another user it and adding it as a local
> > admin -
> >> but that's jsut something else to maintain one each machine. I'd
rather
> >> create a domain user that has the above restirictions, but still has
> >> other
> >> admin rights.
> >>
> >> Any suggestions on how to create this?
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Mike
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>




Posted by Mike Bailey on August 16, 2005, 9:15 am
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I thought I had found a solution to what I wanted by running the
Delegate Control Wizard. I was able to to select the Group I wanted to
use and then gave it the rights to manage user passwords and to add
computers to the Domain. But, when I went back and looked at the actual
rights assigned, it added Account Operators I assumed for the password
management, and then Domain Admins I assume to join computers to the
domain. That put me right back to where I was trying to get away from
which was not making the user a Domain Admin.

Is there a way to give a Group or User the rights to join a computer to
the domain without making them a Domain Admin?

Mike


Roger Abell wrote:
> Part of what I was trying to say was to first, figure out what it is that
> you do want the custom group to be able to do.
> I guess you do in fact want these accounts to be able to do everything
> except for "can't take ownership of folders, can't change security settings
> on folders, can't change Administrator passwords"
>
> I was thinking that you would have a shorter, and precise list of what
> the account should be able to do, in which case one can work forward
> toward filling those needs with grants and delegations.
>
> Given what you have stated, I do not see a way to do that.
> The first two of the three things that should not be possible I can
> see how to take away from Administrators and instead grant only
> to some new group SpecialAdmins that should keep the capabilities.
> The second would be extremely labor filled to do.
> The last however, not changing pwds of admins (but being able to
> change pwd of other accounts) is not obtainable in local machines
> when working backwards from Administrators.
>
> Anyway, it is vitually certain that restricting Administrators will
> result in some of those admins finding the ways to get around or
> remove the restrictions.
> You need to go the other direction and list all that you do want
> the people to be able to do.


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