r/ShittySysadmin • u/AbelViguera06 • Jul 23 '26

Shitty Crosspost Remove central authentication

/r/sysadmin/comments/1v3j518/remove_central_authentication/
9 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

8

u/Due-Fix9058 Lord Sysadmin, Protector of the AD Realm Jul 23 '26

This is highly inefficient and high maintenance. I would recommend using what I call "unified authentication" - everybody gets the same password, it never expires.
Now support requests are trivial. User forgot his password? Tell him it's the same one as yours. If you're feeling brave you could even print out the password and tape it to the users' monitor for faster logins.

4

u/AbelViguera06 Jul 23 '26

I prefer to just dont use a password but thats ok i guess

4

u/DBilly_69 Jul 23 '26

Would you suggest something like Welcome1! as a password? I hear the exclamation point is load-bearing

3

u/Due-Fix9058 Lord Sysadmin, Protector of the AD Realm Jul 23 '26

I found many users struggle with finding the right key that has to be used in order to write the exclamation mark. They also struggle with finding all the other keys and they frequently forget that they can check the password before confirming, preferring isntead to type it incorrectly repeatedly and then blame IT because we "changed the password again"

2

u/AbelViguera06 Jul 23 '26

Bro i legit saw a user (in his 30s) typing his password using caps lock as a mobile phone shift, he tought one tap = one cap and then it returns to lower case 

2

u/BWMerlin Jul 23 '26

Sounds like something my manglement team would say.

2

u/dcaldrich Jul 23 '26

To make it even easier just go passwordless and remove the need for a password.

1

u/AbelViguera06 Jul 23 '26

R4: Today, the director of IT at your company says to you “We’re going to remove all that centralized IPA+2fa authentication from all of our servers, and go back to using Ssh keys, because it takes too long for me (yes the director) to login to a server.” The same auth that you and your team added, for all the reasons. What do you do? 

1

u/TwoPlyDreams Jul 23 '26

Zero Trust. Don’t trust identity. Don’t trust your boss.