| Users are often the first line of defense within an application. Active users take notice of system and data conditions and are usually the first to notify systems administrators when they notice a system or application related anomaly pertaining to their own account. Inactive user accounts pose a risk to systems and applications. Owners of inactive accounts will not notice if unauthorized access to their user account has been obtained.
Attackers that are able to exploit an inactive account can potentially obtain and maintain undetected access to an application. Applications need to track periods of user inactivity and disable application accounts after an organization defined period of inactivity. Such a process greatly reduces the risk that accounts will be misused, hijacked, or data compromised.
To address the multitude of policy based access requirements, many application developers choose to integrate their applications with enterprise level authentication/access mechanisms that meet or exceed access control policy requirements. Such integration allows the application developer to off-load those access control functions and focus on core application features and functionality.
Examples of enterprise level authentication/access mechanisms include, but are not limited to, Active Directory and LDAP.
Database accounts must be disabled by the DBMS, the OS, or an enterprise level authentication/access mechanism after 35 days of inactivity in order to mitigate the risk of unauthorized access. Unauthorized access is particularly difficult to detect on unused accounts due to the lack of user oversight. |
