Unmanaged service accounts

Unmanaged service accounts are ordinary user accounts that have been configured to run services and applications. These accounts are commonly found in organizations because they are easy to set up. However, unmanaged service accounts pose a number of security risks, including weak passwords and overly broad permissions.

By contrast, Managed Service Accounts (MSAs) offer a wealth of advantages over unmanaged service accounts and should be used to host services whenever possible. In particular, MSAs cannot perform interactive sign-ins, cannot be locked out, and have passwords that are managed automatically by the operating system, so no person ever needs to know the password or remember to change it.

To mitigate the risk of unmanaged service accounts, Trend Micro recommends migrating unmanaged service accounts to either standalone or group Managed Service Accounts.