What is user account provisioning User account provisioning is a business process for creating and managing access to resources in an information technology IT system. To be effective, an account provisioning process should ensure that the creation of accounts and access to software and data is consistent and simple to administer. By submitting your personal information, you agree that Tech. Target and its partners may contact you regarding relevant content, products and special offers. You also agree that your personal information may be transferred and processed in the United States, and that you have read and agree to the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy. User provisioning has become a critical problem for enterprises looking to lower the administrative burdens of account management, while also trying to reduce risk. The level of complexity of a provisioning process is typically related to the level of risk associated with the resources that will be accessed by the user. City Siege The Game Hacked. Types of user account provisioning include Discretionary account provisioning allows a network administrator to decide for himself which applications and data the end user should be able to access. A discretionary approach is often used in small or mid sized companies. Self service account provisioning allows users to participate in some aspects of the provisioning process in order to reduce the administrators overhead. Typically, users are able to request an account and manage their own passwords. Workflow based account provisioning gathers the required approvals from the designated approvers before granting a user access to an application or data. For example, the business rules in a finance application might require that every new account request be approved by the companys Chief Financial Officer CFO. Automated account provisioning requires every account to be added the same way through an interface in a centralized managment application. This streamlines the process of adding and managing user credentials and provides administrators with the most accurate way to track who has access to specific applications and data sources. See also access control list, role based access control, network access control, onboarding and offboarding. Active Directory. Active Directory AD is a structure used on computers and servers running the Microsoft Windows operating system OS. AD is used to store network, domain, and user information and was originally created by Microsoft in 1. It was first deployed on Microsoft Windows 2. Active directories provide a number of functions to include providing information regarding objects optimized for fast access and or retrieval. This allows administrators to setup security, push computer updates, and acts as a hierarchical structure. Linux Kerberos Active Directory Integration Definition In EducationLinux Kerberos Active Directory Integration Definition In BusinessThe structure is normally configured in three categories to include hardware such as printers or scanners, web email servers, and objects that are the network and domains main functions. What Are Active Directories Used to Do Active Directory is used by computer administrators to manage end user computer software packages, files, and accounts on medium to large sized organizations. Instead of visiting every single computer client computer to upgrade new software or install Windows patches, the tasks can be accomplished through updated a single object located within an AD forest or tree. Similarly, AD gives the network administrator the capability to grant or remove access at the user level for one or many applications or file structures. The two types of trusts that are incorporated into Microsoft Active Directory are one way non transitive and transitive trusts. In transitive trusts the trust extends past two domains in a set tree. In this case, two entities can access the others domains and trees. In one way transitive trusts, a user is given access to another domain or tree however, the other domain cannot permit access to further domains. This permission set is similar to the classic administrator and end user case. In this case, the admin can see most trees in the forest to include an end users domain. The end user however, cannot access other trees beyond his or her own domain. Active Directories are primarily used to organized large organizations or corporations computer networks and data. They help save significant time and cost by eliminating the need to visit each computer individually to perform routine maintenance and upgrades. Although the learning curve to operating an Active Directory is significant, when operated properly they can result in more efficient large network operation. How Does an Active Directory Work An Active Directory acts as a special purpose database for Windows computers. The system is not designed as a Windows registry replacement, rather, it is designed to manage large numbers of read and search operations as well as changes and updates. The data stored in Active Directory is designed to be replicated, hierarchical, and extensible. Since the data gets replicated, it is not considered as useful for dynamic information like CPU performance statistics. Relevant information that is normally stored in AD includes user contact data, printer queue information, and specific computer or network configuration data. The information stored in AD is in Object and attribute format defined in the AD schema. What Are Active Directory Partitions Active Directory has three primary partitions or naming contexts. These include schema, domain, and configuration. NTFS NT file system sometimes New Technology File System is the file system that the Windows NT operating system uses for storing and retrieving files on a hard disk. Active Directory AD is a structure used on computers and servers running the Microsoft Windows operating system OS. AD is used to store network, domain, and user. The domain partition consists of object types such as contacts, users, groups, computers, and organizational units. The Schema partitions consists of class and attribute definitions, while the configuration partition contains service configuration data, partitions, and websites. Active Directory information can be viewed at one of three levels including forests, trees, or domains. The forest view includes all objects in the directory, tree structures will hold one or more domains, and the lowest level views are for single domains. For example, in a large company or organization there will be dozens to hundreds of users and processes. The forest view will consist of the entire network of users and computers at a specific location. User experience descriptions. HDX user experience optimization Delivers a superior highdefinition user experience on any device, over any network. Kerberos is a computer network protocol used to authenticate and authorize service requests between trusted hosts across untrusted networks. Loading DocCommentXchange. Loading DocCommentXchange. Within the forest will be trees that hold information on program data, domain controllers, and other relevant information. Each of these trees will then contain data on specific objects to include individual domains which can be controlled and categorized. Active Directory Objects. Active Directory structures are grouped into two basic or broad categories resources and security principals. Resources are typically printer or networked hardware resources while security principals relate to computer accounts or groups and are assigned unique security identifiers SIDs. Every object in AD represents a single entity and the associated attributes. Objects are able to have other object types as attributes and are uniquely identified by their name and attributes. The definition for an object is made by its schema. An attribute object is used to define multiple schema objects which contain information regarding the extensibility of the data set. Since Schema object changes automatically propagate throughout the system, making changes or deactivating objects is a deliberate process to avoid unintended consequences. Once an object is created, it cannot be deleted just deactivated. What Are Active Directory Organizational UnitsDomain objects with AD can be grouped into Organizational Units OUs. An OU can be used to provide a hierarchy grouping for a domain. This act simplifies the administration of the domain and can be tailored to resemble the organizational structure in either managerial or geographic terms. OUs can be designed to contain other OUs to act as a container. Microsoft recommends that AD users make use of an OU for structure vice a domain in order to make the implementation of policies and administration easier. The OU level is also where group policies that are AD objects Group Policy Objects are normally applied. Delegation of administrator privileges also occur at this level but can be accomplished using attributes or individual objects. How Does Active Directory Handle Duplicate Usernames Active Directory does not allow duplicate usernames to be entered. One of the common work arounds for this is to add a numeric digit to the end of the persons username. Alternatively, a separate ID system can be implemented at the administrator level to use as an account name in place of the specific user name. The importance of making the decision on how to handle unique user names in AD increases with the size of an organization. This is due to the fact of the odds of having multiple students with identical names increasing with the size of the group being managed. How Are Shadow Groups Managed In AD, organization units are not able to be assigned as owners or trustees. Members of OUs cannot be assigned rights to directory objects with only groups being selectable. Since OUs dont provide access permissions and objects within an OU dont inherit privileges from the container, it is considered a design limitation of Active Directory. The most common work around for AD administrators is to write a script to automatically create and maintain a user group for each OU in the directory. These scripts are written in Power. Shell or Visual Basic and run at pre determined  timeframes to match the OU account membership. They cannot instantly update the security groups, which are referred to as Shadow Groups within AD and is a known limitation of the system.