“A probe is essentially a bit of software that sits on each machine or server,” he said. Matthew Carr is co-founder of Fundamental Cyber. Disable user access control ( UAC) for this account as it can interfere with Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) queries from the probe.Login to each computer on the workgroup using this account at least once.The account cannot be a member of any other group other than administrators.Ensure that the password has no expiry.Ensure that all the computers in the workgroup have an administrator account with the same username and password.The instructions for setting up a probe in a Workgroup includes the following:īefore installing a probe in a Workgroup:
N-central is N-able‘s flagship remote monitoring and management solution for MSPs. MSPs who do not follow this best practice recommendation are knowingly taking a risk.” N-central Probe Instructions “There is an extremely small number of MSP customers who are not leveraging Active Directory (AD), and for them we make explicit in our documentation that we do not recommend using probes. “As a documented best practice, N-able advises MSPs deploy agents directly to each workstation rather than use probes in a Workgroup environment,” he said. Lewis Pope is head security nerd for N-able. So they all have the power to do a lot of harm.” “So they’re taking the most fundamental things that Microsoft puts there and disabling them, and then they’re using all the worst practices, like not just sharing a password and a username, but actually setting all of the computers at an administrator level. “The big picture is that N-able, which is meant to protect you, meant to protect your company, to add another level of protection, is actually undoing all of the built-in protection,” he said.