Accounts: Must only allow adminis responsible for the member srv, standalone, nondomain system to have Admin rights on system

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An account that does not have Administrator duties must not have Administrator rights. Such rights would allow the account to bypass or modify required security restrictions on that machine and make it vulnerable to attack.

System administrators must log on to systems using only accounts with the minimum level of authority necessary.

For domain-joined member servers, the Domain Admins group must be replaced by a domain member server administrator group (see V-243468 in the Active Directory Domain STIG). Restricting highly privileged accounts from the local Administrators group helps mitigate the risk of privilege escalation resulting from credential theft attacks.

Standard user accounts must not be members of the built-in Administrators group.

Remediation

Configure the local "Administrators" group to include only administrator groups or accounts responsible for administration of the system.

STIG: Server
2025: https://system32.eventsentry.com/stig/viewer/V-278177
2022: https://system32.eventsentry.com/stig/viewer/V-254428
2019: https://system32.eventsentry.com/stig/viewer/V-205746
2016: https://system32.eventsentry.com/stig/viewer/V-224964

Desktop
W11: https://system32.eventsentry.com/stig/viewer/V-253269
W10: https://system32.eventsentry.com/stig/viewer/V-220712

[ There is a separate check for domain controllers ]

For domain-joined member servers, replace the Domain Admins group with a domain member server administrator group.

Remove any standard user accounts.

NIST 800-53 : AC-2, AC-6, CM-6
NIST 800-171: 3.1.1, 3.1.5, 3.1.6, 3.4.6
CMMC v2.0 L2: AC.L2-3.1.1, AC.L2-3.1.5, AC.L2-3.1.6, CM.L2-3.4.6
PCI-DSS v4.0: 2.2.1, 7.2.1, 7.2.5
HIPAA SR : §164.312(a)(1), §164.308(a)(3)
HIPAA HICP : Practice 3 (Identity and Access Management)