How policy suceeds, for once

I've been purging out a dying domain. Disabled accounts with a last logon more than three months ago are deleted; enabled accounts with a last logon more than one month ago are disabled with a note in the comment. Do that every week or so. Keep a safe list for genuine service accounts and the domain will be nicely compliant by the time it stops.

The reason I've had to do this myself is a bit sad: the helpdesk, who own all account administration, will go through any distortion to avoid account difficulties. An odd-looking account -- precisely what should be disabled -- won't be touched for fear of breaking something. The policy itself gets re-interpreted to be "disable after ninety days" with no-one able to trace where that decision came from.

It's understandable. The best outcome from good application of the policy is that no-one complains. The likely outcome is senior staff complaining that the helpdesk has broken their account -- and no-one wants to hear that.

So, I've been doing it myself, and that makes everything different. Everyone knows that I break stuff, but everyone also knows that challenging me on what I break can leave them on the wrong side of a clearly distributed policy that they didn't read or understand....

Yes, and in this case I did a blinding job: The account policy allows just two types -- owned, which are subject to the AUP, and service which have to be on my list. The AUP says that owners are responsible for owned accounts, have to log on more often than once a month, and log off after no more than a week. That was carefully chosen to update the last logon time, and to transfer blame.

And it works! Hundreds of users deleted, a few tactful explanations, and no trouble at all. This is the root of the security truism that you start with a policy. You can't act without it -- but it has to be a good'un.