What is a local service account?
Emma Horne
Published Mar 19, 2026
What is a local service account?
The LocalService account is a predefined local account used by the service control manager. It has minimum privileges on the local computer and presents anonymous credentials on the network. This account can be specified in a call to the CreateService and ChangeServiceConfig functions.
What is the difference between local account and service account?
Built-in local user accounts include the System account (for local system administration), the Local Service account which accesses network services with no credentials, and the Network Service account which accesses network resources using the computer’s credentials.
How do you secure a service account?
Here are five service account best practices designed to help you manage and safeguard your service accounts from neglect, abuse or exploitation.
- Discover your service accounts.
- Document, classify, and inventory your service accounts.
- Secure access to each service account.
- Establish governance and assign accountability.
What is a local security policy?
The local security policy of a system is a set of information about the security of a local computer. Which user accounts may access the system and how. For example, interactively, through a network, or as a service. The rights and privileges assigned to accounts.
Where is local service account?
The default local user accounts, and the local user accounts that you create, are located in the Users folder. The Users folder is located in the Local Users and Groups folder in the local Computer Management Microsoft Management Console (MMC).
How does a service account work?
Service accounts are a special type of non-human privileged account used to execute applications and run automated services, virtual machine instances, and other processes. Service accounts can be privileged local or domain accounts, and in some cases, they may have domain administrative privileges.
What is the main purpose of a service account?
A service account is a user account that is created explicitly to provide a security context for services running on Windows Server operating systems. The security context determines the service’s ability to access local and network resources.
Why is a service account more secure than a user account?
User accounts The service will have local and network permissions granted to the account. A local account can’t be authenticated by the domain. So, a service that runs in the security context of a local user account doesn’t have access to network resources (except as an anonymous user).
How do I make my service account non interactive?
Add the “Logon as a service” rights to an account for a Group Policy Object (GPO)
- Make sure your workstation or server is joined to the domain in which your users and GPO’s reside.
- Click Start, point to Run, type mmc, and then click OK.
- On the File menu, click Add/Remove Snap-in.
How do service accounts work?
How do I access local security policy?
To open Local Security Policy, on the Start screen, type secpol. msc, and then press ENTER. Under Security Settings of the console tree, do one of the following: Click Account Policies to edit the Password Policy or Account Lockout Policy.
Where are local security policies stored?
local database
All settings applied through local policy or through a Group Policy Object are stored in a local database on your computer. Whenever a security setting is modified, the computer saves the security setting value to the local database, which retains a history of all the settings that have been applied to the computer.