Introduction

User account and group management is not solely applicable to Active Directory domains. Workgroups actually are tougher to manage with a reasonable amount of control for the simple fact that each computer and server contains a user and group account database unto itself. With Active Directory, you can depend upon being able to pull from a central directory of users and groups that are all held in a single place. Not so in a workgroup configuration. The unpredictability of this system grows geometrically with each newly added workgroup computer that shares resources. Administrators should be aware of how to manage consistent rights assignment, group membership, and security settings across the members of a workgroup.

This chapter looks at local users and groups, configuring local policy, auditing security, and assigning rights. In addition, it covers managing multiple credentials that a single user may have and how to manage cached credentials to enable single sign-on.