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8 Best Practices in Service Account Management
What is a Service Account?
A service accounts is a special user account used by applications, services, or processes to interact securely and automatically with other software, systems, or resources. These accounts are run via “non-human” intervention and typically hold elevated privileges to business-critical applications, web services, databases, and APIs. A single service account may be referenced in multiple places on multiple instances.
Why are Service Accounts Important?
Service accounts are useful for running programs that require continuous operation. Systems often use accounts—like administrator on Windows or root on Linux—to run persistent programs regardless of whether someone logs into the machine.
Simply put, service accounts are needed to perform tasks on behalf of the application users. Consider them as proxies for performing specific tasks for users who don’t or shouldn’t have access to sensitive data and systems.
Examples of Service Accounts
Depending on the environment they are in, and the programs or processes related to them, service accounts can be of the following types:
- In Unix and Linux environments, service accounts run as applications. Common service accounts here include init and inetd, among others.
- In Windows, service accounts concern themselves with security pertaining to various Windows Server services, determining how much each service may access the local and network resources.
- In cloud environments, service accounts manage permissions for virtual machines (VM) to ensure safe connections to APIs and various cloud services.
What Happens When Service Account Security is Not Followed?
As service accounts carry high-level privileges, they provide a powerful means of access, but that’s not the only worrisome part.
Service account credentials must be widely known and recognised by all applications and services that interact with them. This means that any application and all the programs that it interacts with must identify and verify the service account’s credentials. This makes service accounts prime targets for cyber attackers and hence underscores the importance of following service account security.
But before we get into the “how” of it, let us first discuss the…
Challenges Associated With Service Account Management
- Discovery
Managing service accounts entails discovering them all in the first place. Since organisations can have hundreds or even thousands of service accounts, it can be challenging to discover every single one. If an organisation is unaware of all its service accounts, how can it secure them effectively?
- Visibility and Monitoring
Because organisations often lack complete visibility of how service accounts are being used, detecting malicious activity stemming from them is often a huge challenge. In addition, no identity infrastructure can automatically filter which users from the overall list are service accounts.
Furthermore, determining their activity or purpose can be more difficult if service accounts are not associated with a specific user. This can result in breaches via unauthorised access, leading to lateral movement attacks.
- Manual Management
Even if the organisation were to discover all its service accounts, the fact that these accounts are tightly interconnected and are referenced across multiple assets makes their management quite complex.
- Credentials Challenge
Any credential change pertaining to a service account must be performed in every service/application that stores its credentials. If you miss any of the references that have stored credentials, the wrong ones will be used, which can cause system failures, adversely impacting operational continuity.
The use of an incorrect credential by a service could even cause the operating system to think that the service account is compromised and, consequently, lock out the account. This inadvertently means that every service that uses said locked-out account will fail, too.
To avoid service disruption due to the rotation hassle of credentials, service accounts are configured with non-expiring credentials that remain unchanged for years, which, again, is a problem.
- Lucrative Target for Attackers
High-level privileges and no password rotation are enough reasons for attackers to view service accounts as easy and lucrative targets. In addition, because non-human entities mostly use service accounts, security controls such as two-factor authentication (TFA) cannot be applied, as human interaction is required for authentication purposes. This makes the security issue even more concerning.
…. which brings us to the…
Top 8 Best Practices for Securing Service Accounts
1. Know Your Existing Service Account Types and Usage
Before you can secure your service accounts effectively, you need to have a comprehensive understanding of what types of service accounts your organisation uses and how they are being utilised. This includes identifying which applications or systems rely on these accounts and their access level.
Prioritise service accounts by category, depending on risk and how critical each is to business operations. This way, the highest priority accounts can be recovered first if a security breach occurs.
A well-defined hierarchy will help reduce downtime and minimise business disruption amid disaster recovery.
2. Inventorise
Use a Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution to scan the entire IT environment and automatically create a comprehensive inventory of all service accounts, detailing their purpose, associated applications or systems, and the individuals responsible for their management. With a PAM solution in place, you can maintain a real-time record of service accounts, their access rights, and usage history.
3. Create Governance Policies
Establish clear governance policies and procedures that dictate how service accounts are created, managed, and monitored. PAM tools often offer policy-driven workflows that streamline service account creation, provisioning, and approval. Enforcing governance policies ensures consistency, accountability, and compliance in service account management.
4. Avoid Creating Service Accounts with Users’ Personal Credentials
One common mistake is using personal credentials (e.g., an employee’s username and password) for service accounts. This practice is risky because it ties the account’s security to an individual and can lead to potential vulnerabilities if that person leaves the organisation or their credentials are compromised. Instead, use dedicated service account credentials separate from personal user accounts.
5. Audit and Monitor
Implement a comprehensive auditing system that captures all activities associated with service account management. PAM solutions offer real-time monitoring capabilities, which help detect anomalies, identify potential threats, trigger immediate alerts, and respond swiftly to mitigate risks. Reviewing audit logs is essential to maintain visibility and accountability over service account actions.
6. Password Rotation
Password rotation is a fundamental aspect of service account security. Enforce a strict password rotation policy for service accounts to minimise the risk of password-related vulnerabilities. PAM solutions can automate password changes, ensuring that passwords are regularly updated and complex. By managing password rotation in service account management, you reduce the window of opportunity for attackers to compromise these accounts, enhancing overall security. Additionally, password vaults within PAM systems allow you to store and manage service account credentials securely.
7. Enable a Strict POLP (Principle of Least Privilege) Policy
Implement the Principle of Least Privilege (POLP) rigorously as a part of service account management by providing the minimum level of access required to fulfil its designated role. PAM solutions enable fine-grained control over access permissions, allowing you to grant the least privilege necessary for tasks. By adhering to POLP, you reduce the attack surface and mitigate the risk of unauthorised access or misuse of service accounts.
8. Clear Service Accounts That Are No Longer Needed
Regularly review and decommission service accounts that are no longer in use or necessary for your organisation’s operations. Unused or obsolete service accounts can be easy targets for attackers, so it’s essential to keep your service account inventory clean and up to date.
Implementing Tools to Combat Service Account Management Challenges
Special attention to service account security can boost all your cybersecurity efforts and help protect your organisation as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Organisations must leverage automation tools to centralise service account management. By implementing the recommended best practices and integrating them with a comprehensive PAM solution, you can ensure robust security for your service accounts.
Keeping service account management as part of a broader category of PAM ensures automated control over user provisioning and de-provisioning, along with other best security practices to protect all types of accounts. These help IT admins gain granular control over service accounts by managing the complete account lifecycle, building workflow templates that adhere to internal policies, providing compliance reports and meeting security standards.
For more details about PAM features, benefits, and implementation tips, click here.
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