Sounds like you're on the right track. I didn't mean to imply that you 
absolutely shouldn't log into your workstation. Simply that what you described 
contradicted your desire to avoid logging into your workstation with DA creds.

-----Original Message-----
From: Kurt Buff [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 12:33 AM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: Re: Log on to DC directly

Um, it's *my* workstation. I maintain it. I send the security logs to my syslog 
server, same as my servers. Nobody else logs into it without me knowing about 
it. If I can't trust that, well, I'm screwed. I think I'm just fine with this 
setup, but I have some refinements, both in place and contemplated.

I have put together a VM on which I've installed a number of critical 
applications, such as the firewall management app, the various SAN management 
apps, the RSAT tools, and others. I trust that one as well, but only log into 
it with my DA account, and it's in a separate OU for management purposes.

And, while I currently only have two accounts - my standard user account, and 
my DA account, I'm contemplating three more personal accounts, in order of 
priority:
     o- An account with which I log into other users' workstations (and 
terminal servers), which will be a member of a "workstation administrators" 
group that already exists and also applies to our Terminal Server machine
     o- An account with which I log into other servers, such as file/print, 
SQL, or other application servers, which other IT staff (who are not DAs) might 
log into for administrative purposes
     o- An Exchange Admin account to log into Exchange servers (and which is 
not the Exchange Service account)

My standard user account is a member of the "workstation administrators" group, 
and I don't log into users' machines with my DA account.

In a small (three person) infrastructure team which is part of a small IT staff 
(7, including manager, dba/crm guy, web app guy and ERP guy), I think we're 
doing fairly well. It's a struggle to get my infrastructure team to understand 
some of the security details, but they're slowing getting there.

Kurt

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 19:40, Crawford, Scott <[email protected]> wrote:
> The bottom line rule should be only enter DA credentials into trusted 
> machines. I'd much rather interactively log into a DC than use DA creds on an 
> untrusted machine.  You might want to investigate how much you *really* need 
> to use DA credentials.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kurt Buff [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 5:21 PM
> To: NT System Admin Issues
> Subject: Re: Log on to DC directly
>
> Well, let's see.
>
> If you're not supposed to log into the DC interactively with your DA account, 
> and you not supposed to use your workstation to use the RSAT tools in a 
> non-interactive fashion with your DA account (that is, so that it doesn't 
> create a local DA account profile), and you can't login interactively into 
> your workstation with your DA account, what are you left with?
>
> Kurt
>
> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 14:16, Crawford, Scott <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Unfortunately, doing this violates "shouldn't log into a workstation with 
>> your DA account."  Granted, it's better than logging in interactively.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Kurt Buff [mailto:[email protected]]
>> Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 1:56 PM
>> To: NT System Admin Issues
>> Subject: Re: Log on to DC directly
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 11:19, David Lum <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Barring being an SBS domain, is there really any reason someone 
>>> needs to log in to a DC directly unless installing an app?
>>>
>>> David Lum
>>> Systems Engineer // NWEATM
>>> Office 503.548.5229 // Cell (voice/text) 503.267.9764
>>
>> Some network diagnostics will only work from there, for sure (ping, etc.).
>>
>> But for daily operations, not so much.
>>
>> Below is a set of command lines that I use from an elevated prompt to start 
>> the RSAT and other tools on my Win7 workstation. I log in as a standard 
>> user, open cmd.exe as administrator, then copy/paste these into the command 
>> prompt, each of which uses my Domain Admin account to do what I need to do.
>>
>> The nice thing is that opening these apps in this fashion doesn't put a 
>> profile for my DA account on the local machine, and we all know that you 
>> shouldn't log into a workstation with your DA account.
>>
>> I keep a notepad with the commands open at all times.
>>
>> Kurt
>>
>>
>>
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\mmc.exe 
>> C:\windows\system32\dsa.msc"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\mmc.exe 
>> C:\windows\system32\dssite.msc"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\mmc.exe 
>> C:\windows\system32\domain.msc"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\mmc.exe 
>> C:\windows\system32\gpmc.msc"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\mmc.exe 
>> C:\windows\system32\dhcpmgmt.msc"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\mmc.exe 
>> C:\windows\system32\dnsmgmt.msc /s"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\mmc.exe 
>> C:\windows\system32\eventvwr.msc /s runas /netonly 
>> /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\mmc.exe \"C:\Program 
>> Files\Update Services\administrationsnapin\wsus.msc"\"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\mmc.exe 
>> C:\windows\system32\tsadmin.msc"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\mmc.exe 
>> C:\windows\system32\compmgmt.msc"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] 
>> "C:\windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] 
>> "C:\windows\system32\explorer.exe"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\msra.exe 
>> /offerra"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] 
>> "C:\windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] 
>> "C:\windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\PowerShell_ISE.exe"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\utils\procexp.exe"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\Program Files (x86)\Sunbelt 
>> Software\Enterprise\EnterpriseConsole.exe"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\Program Files 
>> (x86)\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\ExPDA\ExPDA.exe"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\mmc.exe 
>> C:\windows\system32\adsiedit.msc"
>> runas /netonly /user:[email protected] "C:\windows\system32\mmc.exe 
>> C:\windows\system32\pkiview.msc"
>>
>> ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ 
>> <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/>  ~
>>
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>> To manage subscriptions click here:
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>
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> <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/>  ~
>
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