Admin accounts and least privilege: why separating admin from everyday use matters

Every account with administrator rights is a bigger prize for an attacker than an ordinary one, because a compromised admin account can reach far more than a compromised standard one can. "Least privilege" just means only granting admin rights to the people who genuinely need them, only for what they need them for, not handing them out by default because it's easier.

In practice that means two things: keeping the list of who actually has admin access short and reviewed regularly, and giving anyone who needs admin rights a completely separate account for it: one for email and everyday browsing, a different one purely for admin tasks. Using an admin account to read email or browse the web exposes a powerful account to entirely ordinary, avoidable risks.

It sounds like a small process change, but it's one of the controls that most directly limits how far a single compromised account can actually reach. Run the free 5-minute readiness check to see where your access control stands.