The Use and Administration of Shared Accounts

This paper will discuss the use and security of shared accounts. While shared accounts exist on other systems, this paper has been limited in scope to focus on UNIX- and Microsoft Windows-based systems, however the basic principles should be applicable to other systems as well. The paper will start by defining what shared accounts are, some of their uses, and some of associated risks of those uses. Following that will be a discussion about how to secure shared user accounts to help mitigate their associated risks. It will conclude by presenting information on how a shared account that had minimal security applied and was 'in the wild' was secured.