Rename Administrator Account

[Nightcheck]

To enhance our security we are considering that we rename
the Administrator Account.

After a lot of Googling (as well as reading Microsoft's instructions) - it seems pretty easy and straight forward.

We were just going to do it ourselves (We're just a small 8 person Company and don't have an on site IT person) but decided to let the IT Company we use know what we wanted to do

They agree it is a good idea but that they should do it because in their words "There are many services that run as Administrator on the server and they need
to be changed as well". In every article (including Microsofts) - I read nothing about having to change Services also.

Is there more to it than meets the eye i.e, changing a bunch of Admin. Services or is it possible all the articles are correct and our IT Co. is being a bit disingenuous?

Thanks so much in advance..

Rick

 

[58sniper]

If you rename the administrator account, services that use that account should adjust accordingly.

Keep in mind that renaming the account only buys you a little bit of security. Common recommendations include creating another administrative account (by copying the default). Then, rename and DISABLE the default account. Use the newly created account for your administration.

It's also a good idea to use service accounts for your services, and not the administrative account.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author The Complete Reference: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

 

[ShackDaddy]

The easy way to find out if there's anything to worry about is to go into the Admin Tools and check Services. Look down the right side of that interface and you'll see what context each service runs under. It's quite possible that none of your services are using the Administrator account, and if one or two are, you will just need to remember to come back here after you change the Admin account name and go into the properties of those services and specify the new name of the Admin account.

This is not a difficult process.

Dave Shackelford
Shackelford Consulting

 

[LWComputingMVP]

I prefer to create service accounts with VERY long passwords for any services that need to run as a user... The administrator account, in my opinion, should never be used to run services and if it isn't renaming it does not create problems.

-Lee

Those who ask why, learn

http://www.lwcomputing.com

 

[petrosky]

Nightcheck,

One other thing to keep in mind when renaming the admin account is to check whether any scheduled tasks use this credential.

This can be very important if your external IT people use scheduled tasks for after hours jobs under that account.

HTH.

Peter.

Remember- It's nice to be important,
but it's important to be nice