Privileged Account vs Normal account

Definition of an Account: –

An account is the means of communication for establishing a connection between a user and an organizational resource, likely a computer or a network server. The accounts are responsible for the authentication of user and determining whether user has the permission to access the resource. An account generally requires a username, password and any information related to the user for authentication process.

Privileged Account: –

A privileged account refers to an account that has been entitled with administrative or specialized access across one or many systems on an enterprise network depending on the permission levels entitled to the user. A privileged account can be a named account or a generic account such as an administrator, a root account, router ‘en’ account or a database ownership account such as ‘sa’ and is needed by IT users for managing the functioning of a platform in an organization. They are responsible to carry out daily tasks as well as activities in a Break-Glass scenario.

Normal Account: –

A normal account is a standard user account attributed to an end user with access rights specific to the work they have been tasked to. A normal account usually represents a Human Identity with a password that needs to be memorized, like an Active Directory Account. A Normal account gives a user the ability to access all utilities and software on his workstation, and are created for all users in the organization like IT Users, Business Users etc.

In some emergency situations, a Normal account can be elevated to a Privileged Account to perform some administrative tasks.

Differences between a Privileged Account and a Normal Account: –