Whether as standalone systems or part of a corporate Active Directory environment, chances are your company runs Windows machines, which you may be responsible for supporting, even indirectly, if you work in a different field.

This checklist, written by Scott Matteson for TechRepublic Premium, is intended to provide management guidelines and solutions to many of the problems that routinely occur with Windows user accounts.

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  3. Plan for access breach

  It may sound absurd to plan for a user account to be hacked or compromised, but the intent here is to assess the potential damage before it occurs so you can manage the situation accordingly. Ask a few key questions to determine how best to proceed:

  • Will this account have administrator access? To what or where? Limit the scope to only what’s necessary to perform job responsibilities.

  • Will this account be permitted access to confidential data? What happens if that data is leaked? The strategy above should apply — use the ‘least access needed’ principle to reduce the scope of access. Ensure confidential data is backed up and not kept on a single device or system.

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TIME SAVED: Crafting this content required 34 hours of dedicated writing, editing, research, and design.