In an effort to secure your workstation, using an elevated account is an easy method to ensure that only what you permit to run as administrator will run on your system. In the past few years, security has become of the utmost importance due to obvious reasons. This guide will help clarify not only the distinction between what is an elevated account but also why have an elevated account.

Typical Implementation of this Approach

In your typical configuration of this type of security approach, you will only need to remember and maintain two accounts:

1. A Standard Account

2. An Elevated Account

These two accounts will be key for use on a day to day basis. It is also important to note that your passwords should not be written down or stored on a computer. Please consult the password standards guide for more information.

The Standard Account

As the name implies, the Standard Account will be used for day to day usage of your computer. Some of the activities you might use this account for is to log in to your computer, web browsing, and standard application usage. Note: This is the only account that should be used to log onto your machine.

The Elevated Account

While using your standard account, you might run into a scenario where using elevated privileges is required in order to complete your task. This is where the elevated account comes to fruition. The elevated account allows you to run trusted programs as administrator only when they need to be run as administrator. This reduces the amount of applications that have full access to your machine as well as reduces the possibility that if someone gains unauthorized access to your computer that they will be restricted to only your standard user account.

Usage

While the concept of the need for an elevated account may be clear, how do you actually use your elevated account when you need it when logged into your standard account? The first step is to right-click on the program that you would like to run as administrator and click "Run as Administrator." This will prompt you for your username and password. While at first this process may seem time consuming, entering these credentials becomes second nature and becomes routine very quickly.

Password Management

We recommend you set a calendar reminder to reset your Elevated account before the 180 day expiration so you don't get locked out. An easy way to change the password is to log into a domain computer with your eleveted account, then choose change password from the Ctrl+ALT+Delete menu.