Common account management practices

Account management ranged from account creation on start up to its disablement when someone leaves the company. Fully understanding these concepts is crucial to obtaining the Security+ certification.

Account types

Each user in a system needs an account to access the network in a Microsoft Active Directory environment; the user account has a Security Identifier (SID) linked to the account. When I create a user called Ian they may have an SID of SID 1-5-1-2345678-345678. When the account is deleted the SID is gone and a new SID is created.

For example, a member of the IT team has deleted a user account called Ian—it may have a SID of SID 1-5-1-2345678-345678, so he quickly creates another account called Ian but this account cannot access resources as it has a new SID of SID 1-5-1-2345678-3499999. The first portion from left to right, identifies the domain and then the remainder is a serial number that is never reused.

There are various different types of user...