For years, Microsoft has been telling IT professionals that the way to secure the administrator account in Windows NT and Windows 2000 is to rename it. However, renaming the administrator account does little to protect it. Hacker utilities such as Red Button can quickly determine the administrator account's new name. Once hackers know the true administrator account name, they simply need to figure out the administrative password to gain unlimited access to the Windows domain.

Although the Windows administrator account is obviously a necessity, it's also a great security risk because of how it can be exploited. I'm going to discuss some things you can do to protect the administrator account(s) in Windows.

[ Read more ]