Service Account Best Practices: How to Manage and Secure Them

Service accounts operate as non-human, special machine based privileged accounts used to execute applications, run automated services, and manage virtual machine instances. Service accounts can be privileged local or domain accounts, and in some cases, they may have domain administrative privileges.

Service accounts run automated business processes and are used by applications, not people. They can be stored in services, tasks, COM objects, Internet Information Services (IIS), SharePoint, databases, and applications. A single service or process account may be referenced in multiple places.

Many servers use local accounts - like root on Linux and administrator on Windows - to run persistent applications, whether or not someone logs into the machine. For example, a web site would be an example of a persistent application, as would a database or other line-of-business application. Service accounts are needed for these persistent applications so that they can perform actions on behalf of the users of the application. In other words, service accounts are proxies for performing limited actions for users that have no access to sensitive data and systems.

Generally, service accounts are created and configured by the package manager during installation of the service software. So, even as an administrator, humans are not (and should not) be directly in charge of the creation of service accounts.

This post explores service account best practices, common use cases across different environments, and the top management challenges IT teams face.

Depending on the systems, service accounts are named differently. Here are some examples of service accounts in Windows, Unix, Linux, and the cloud.

Service accounts in Unix and Linux

Unix and Linux service accounts are known as init or inetd. They are a type of non-human privileged account that can execute applications and run automated services, virtual machine instances, and other processes.

Service accounts in the cloud

Cloud service accounts are also known as cloud compute service accounts or virtual service accounts. These types of accounts are used by an application or compute workload, rather than by a person.

Service accounts in Windows

Microsoft defines a service account as, “a user account that is created explicitly to provide a security context for services running on Windows Server operating systems. The security context determines the service’s ability to access local and network resources.” These service accounts often connect with mission-critical applications that have elevated privileges.

Windows Service accounts are known by the most common types listed here:

• LocalSystem

• NetworkService

• Local user account

• Domain user account

The top challenges of securing and managing service accounts include password rotation, access sprawl, and lack of visibility. Hackers highly prize these powerful credentials.

1. Service Account Password Management and Rotation

Service account password management requires administrators to change superuser credentials in the authentication system and every associated application. So, not only must you update the authenticator, but also all references. Updating all the places where a service account is stored is known as propagation.

If you miss any of the places that have a stored password, the wrong password will be used and that could spur cascading system failures. The use of an incorrect password by a service could even cause the operating system to think that the account is under attack and, consequently, lock out the account. This means that every service that uses that locked out account will now fail too.

Because of the implications of passwords that don’t correctly sync, many organizations simply choose to ignore the issue, rather than risk downtime. Consequently, service accounts are often configured with non-expiring credentials that remain unchanged for years!

2. Service Account Access Sprawl

Ensuring secure service account access proves challenging because these credentials hold privileged permissions on the local system and off system resources. This facilitates the smooth operation of many IT workflows, but a single service account can easily be referenced in many applications or processes. This interconnection, along with the critical nature of their usage, makes them difficult to manage.

In many cases, the mechanics of service accounts means an account must be known and verifiable to not only the application, but also everything that the application interacts with. Consequently, the service account is generally a powerful access credential.

3. Shared Ownership and Weak Accountability

Since service accounts are not directly associated with a human identity, but rather with a machine identity, access to service accounts requires sharing of the credentials for those accounts. This sharing of credentials dilutes accountability and makes oversight of service accounts difficult. For instance, while an asset or system associated with a service account may no longer be needed, the service account often remains because no human is directly responsible for it. Likewise, temporary service accounts, often used for software installation or maintenance, can be left in place long after their initial use, far too often with default passwords still in place.

Centralized provisioning of service accounts has traditionally posed a challenge due to the disparate origin of these accounts (Windows, Unix, Linux and the Cloud have separate accounts, provisioned individually when the software they manage is installed). Consequently, many organizations manually provision service accounts.

Given the complexities around service account management, some IT teams take the approach of manually managing service account credentials. This is a tedious, error-prone, and potentially disastrous, process. Manual rotation requires identifying everywhere the credentials exist and executing a change whenever the credential is used. As mentioned earlier, an errant credential change can disrupt services and cause critical systems to go down. Additionally, just as with other instances of password management, humans invariably fall into the trap of using easy to remember credentials, or reuse credentials across multiple accounts. When credentials are re-used, an exploit targeting one instance can potentially lead to the compromise of all the accounts that share the same password.

4. Service Account Auditing and Visibility Gaps

Service accounts create some visibility issues that are common to all types of non-human/machine accounts. Since they typically run in the background without the interaction of a human user, these machine accounts may avoid scrutiny and oversight, so long as services seem to be operating smoothly. Additionally, most organizations suffer from a sprawl of service accounts, including orphaned accounts that are forgotten and/or no longer used.

It’s possible that multiple identities (users) have access to a service account and share the same login details. This means it may be impossible to connect a single user’s actions to any changes to the service account.

Put simply, most organizations have serious service account lifecycle management deficiencies when it comes to addressing provisioning, onboarding, session auditing, de-provisioning, and enforcement of other security best practices.

5. Business and Security Risk From Unmanaged Service Accounts

Unmanaged service account risk threatens proper system functioning and business continuity because these processes depend on the underlying services. The compromise or malfunction of a service account can potentially cause widespread system outages, particularly if an account is associated with multiple services.

Organizations enforcing service account security best practices carefully manage, control, and audit these credentials. In most cases, they can also be associated back to an identity as an owner. However, service accounts should not have the same characteristics as a person logging on to a system. They should not have interactive user interface privileges, nor the capability to operate as a normal account or user. Depending on the operating system or infrastructure, this could encompass restricting everything from executing a batch process, to not having a proper shell assigned to the account. Service accounts should also not be delegated to any form of just-in-time (JIT) access model.

What is the most effective and secure way to tackle this service account management challenge? The best approach is two-fold. The first element requires an immediate plan to identify and bring all accounts under centralized management. The second element entails implementing an ongoing program based on automated onboarding and management of new accounts. Here are the best practices for securing and managing service accounts broken into two proven implementation phases.

1. Discover and onboard all service accounts via automation

If you do not know where all your privileged service accounts are, you cannot fully control and audit their usage. The first priority, as with all other types of accounts, is to deploy a method of continuous identification and cataloging to bring them all under centralized management.

BeyondTrust’s Password Safe solution can discover every location throughout the network where a service account is referenced. Once profiled and classified, Password Safe’s Discovery capability automatically brings accounts under management through simple, out-of-the-box configuration that helps organizations accelerate account onboarding and risk mitigation.

2. Automate New Service Account Onboarding

Given the dynamic nature of IT environments, auto-discovery capabilities save time and ensure no account is left unmanaged. Automatically profiling and classifying accounts ensures that new service accounts are immediately brought under control, removing the complexity and risk of manual administration. This enables complete visibility over all privileges in an environment. BeyondTrust Password Safe continuously brings new accounts under management through Smart Rules. The product helps organizations control service accounts control via centralized management and a full audit trail.

3. Secure and Monitor Access to Service Accounts

Privileged credentials (passwords, SSH keys, etc.) associated with service accounts must be centrally secured within an encrypted credential safe. Access to these credentials should be controlled and monitored to mitigate the risk of misuse.

Password Safe automates privileged credential and privileged session management, providing secure access control, auditing, alerting, and recording for any privileged account, including service accounts.

4. Effectively Propagate Credentials

As service account credentials are changed, the automatic propagation of credentials to all places where they are referenced is a critical factor in preventing systems failures and downtime.

Full management of these credentials requires knowledge of all valid account identifiers before making any change. This process is known as Account Enumeration. Every time it executes a credential change, Password Safe can dynamically discover service account enumeration before changing service account passwords. The product can also propagate the credentials with speed and accuracy to prevent application downtime due to out of sync credentials.

5. Apply the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP)

When creating a service account, it is advisable to create accounts with the minimum privilege required to complete the target tasks. For example, a few additional privileges that can generally be removed include remote access functionality, internet, and email access and remote-control rights.

Access control lists (ACLs) can be used to define resources to assets. As part of this process, identify all the resources a service account can access, determine the appropriateness of that access, and make any necessary changes to ensure least privilege access is enforced. As part of least privilege and any zero trust strategy, you should also strive to minimize the number of service accounts associated with an identity.

6. Avoid Putting Service Accounts in Built-in Privileged Groups

Assigning service accounts in built-in privileged groups, such as the local Administrators or Domain Admins group, is risky. All users in the group will know the service account’s credentials, and those credentials can be misused or compromised.

7. Have a Break Glass Plan for Service Accounts

At some point—whether due to a network outage, a broken application, or a natural disaster—your organization may need re-establish secure access to your critical systems. You need to plan for outage scenarios that may disrupt the availability of your service account password management solution. In these instances, when the password of a service account may be unknown (so a service will no longer start), try to initiate these troubleshooting steps to re-establish a service:

• Randomize the password of the service using the functional account.

• Establish a privileged connection to the system using a stored credential and manually set the service account password before automating password management.

Service accounts are critical to the smooth operation of most IT systems. Manual management of these critical accounts won’t scale or meet the security and auditing requirements of modern enterprises.

Today, organizations can leverage solutions to automate the discovery and management of service accounts, while securing, controlling, and auditing access to them. Automation is essential to mitigating the risk of service account sprawl and protecting your enterprise from the risks of compromised privileged credentials.

BeyondTrust Password Safe combines privileged password and session management to discover, manage, and audit all privileged credential activity. With BeyondTrust, you can easily control privileged user accounts, service accounts, applications, and more, with a searchable audit trail for compliance and forensics.

Want to reveal privileged accounts and credentials in your own environment? With BeyondTrust’s free discovery tool, you will identify account misconfigurations, overprivileged accounts, unused accounts, old passwords, and more. Free and totally private, you get unlimited scans, detailed scan results, and a summary report of all findings.

Use BeyondTrust's Service Account Discovery Tool (free tool)

PAM Buyer's Guide (comprehensive guide, including checklists and templates)

Privileged Password Management Explained (white paper)

How to Access Privileged Passwords in ‘Break Glass’ Scenarios (white paper)

Functional Accounts: Do’s & Don’ts (blog)

Organizations use service accounts to run persistent applications, scheduled jobs, scripts, integrations, and cloud workloads that need non-human access to systems and data.

Service accounts help systems perform automated work in the background across Windows, Unix, Linux, and cloud environments. They often support websites, databases, business applications, and other long-running services that need access to local or network resources without direct human interaction