Services Tied to Disabled Account

The Network: A non-profit corporation that operates dozens of hospitals and ancillary care facilities in 17 states.

The Expectation: Workstations are extensively used on the hospital floor; in many cases the login is by the nursing staff working the shift.

The Catch: One particular workstation on the Pediatrics floor was shunned by all staff as “extremely slow.” After some initial complaints to IT, staff decided to “avoid” that particular machine.

The Find: Reviewing logs from the workstation showed that a former IT staffer had installed software using his personal credentials rather than a service account. When he left, his credentials were disabled but the software continuously tried to login, failing hundreds of times every minute. This consumed CPU and filled the event log completely. The workstation was fully occupied doing useless things.

The Fix: Use a service account to run the software package.

The Lesson: Silly rabbit, personal accounts are for people.