How to Govern Local Admin Rights at Scale

Handing out local admin rights might seem convenient for solving urgent tickets, but this practice creates massive security gaps and compliance headaches. Proper local admin rights management replaces this risky habit with a secure, scalable system.

This practical guide will walk you through building a governance framework that actually works in the real world.

Steps to building your scalable local admin rights framework

A structured framework turns security best practices into a consistent, auditable program for governing access.

📌 Use case: Initiate this process not just after an incident, but as core IT hygiene. Key triggers include post-breach remediation, preparing for compliance audits like SOC 2, onboarding new clients, or any event that highlights the risks of uncontrolled administrative access.

📌 Prerequisites: Before you begin, ensure you have these essentials in place:

• You need a complete inventory of endpoints and their local group memberships.
• Establish agreed-upon risk tiers for different users and devices
• A clear, simple approval path for exceptions.
• Scripting or tool access to modify local group membership across Windows 10 and Windows 11 environments.
• Designate a central workspace for storing evidence and reports for audits and QBRs.

Once you have these requirements in place, proceed with the steps below.

Step 1: Build a local admin rights register

A central register turns a chaotic list of admin accounts into a managed, auditable asset, forming the foundation of effective local admin rights management.

How to build and maintain your register

Use a PowerShell script or your RMM tool to discover all members of the local Administrators group across your devices.

Document every non-default entry in a central register (like a spreadsheet or database), capturing the user, business justification, approval ticket, owner, grant date, and a mandatory expiration date.

With an active register, you establish a justified and time-bound record of all privileged access, setting the stage for securely removing unnecessary rights in the next step.

Step 2: Replace the standing access with a time-bound elevation

Eliminate permanent local admin rights to drastically reduce your attack surface.

How to implement time-bound access

1. Establish a “Zero-Standing-Privilege” default.
   • Make no permanent local admin rights your baseline policy for all users.
2. Grant rights via ticketed time windows.
   • When admin access is needed, approve it only for a short, predefined period linked to a specific support ticket or change request.
3. Utilize the right tools for the job.
   • Automate the process with a PAM solution for checking out full admin credentials, or a privilege elevation tool to grant rights to specific applications only.

Once implemented, every elevation is logged and automatically revoked, creating a clear audit trail and proving your adherence to local admin rights best practices.

Step 3: Standardize requests, reviews, and exceptions

A standardized process turns risky, ad-hoc approvals into a secure, accountable workflow.

Implementing a governance workflow

1. Implement a mandatory request form.
   • Capture essential details for every request: user, business justification, risk level, systems affected, duration, and approver.
2. Escalate high-risk approvals.
   • Automatically route any request flagged as high-risk to a dedicated security reviewer for an additional layer of scrutiny.
3. Set fixed expirations and owners.
   • Ensure every approved exception has a hard expiry date and a designated review owner, preventing temporary access from becoming a permanent security risk.

This creates a defensible standard for access, generating clear evidence for audits and ensuring all exceptions are tracked and time-bound.

Step 4: Monitor membership and detect drift

Continuous monitoring ensures your local admin rights policy remains actively enforced.

How to detect and remediate drift

Automate regular scans of all endpoints to compare actual local Administrators group members against your approved register.

Immediately flag and ticket any discrepancies: unapproved users, over-permissioned groups, or expired accounts. Mandate a brief post-mortem for each fix to capture root causes and prevent recurrence.

This proactive process generates demonstrable evidence of compliance for audits and ensures your security posture remains strong and verifiable.

Step 5: Conduct recurring permission reviews

Regular reviews prevent temporary privileges from becoming permanent security risks.

The review process

1. Schedule regular sessions.
   • Conduct monthly spot-checks and formal quarterly reviews.
2. Validate every entry.
   • Verify each admin in your register still has a valid business need.
3. Confirm active expiration.
   • Ensure every permission has a future expiry date.
4. Remove stale access.
   • Immediately revoke any unjustified or outdated privileges.
5. Rotate break-glass credentials.
   • Update emergency account passwords as a standard security measure.
6. Document and report.
   • Record formal attestation from business owners and summarize findings in a management report.

Institutionalizing these reviews creates a powerful, demonstrable record of proactive security management and compliance for audits and leadership reviews.

Step 6: Implement guardrails for break-glass and service accounts

Secure emergency and system accounts with strict controls to prevent misuse.

Key security measures

For break-glass accounts, enforce secure password storage in a vault, regular rotation, and comprehensive access logging, prohibiting routine use.

For service accounts requiring local admin rights, document the business justification, restrict interactive logon capabilities, and review usage logs. Tag both account types in your register for heightened scrutiny during reviews.

These measures transform necessary privileged accounts from security liabilities into controlled, auditable safety nets.

Step 7: Publish evidence and KPIs

Regular reporting turns security controls into measurable business value.

Key metrics to track

Create a concise monthly dashboard per client featuring:

• Elevated sessions granted
• Median privilege duration
• On-time removal rate
• Drift events resolved
• Exception counts by age
• Review attestation status

Always include trend analysis and a brief narrative linking this data to concrete risk reduction and audit preparedness. Consistent reporting builds client trust and demonstrates proactive risk management, clearly showing that privileges are controlled and your security posture is improving.

Leveraging NinjaOne for streamlined local admin rights governance

NinjaOne provides integrated tools to operationalize and scale your local admin rights management framework efficiently.

• Targeted device tagging
  • Quickly identify and group devices that require stricter administrative controls, allowing for precise policy enforcement.
• Automated script scheduling
  • Run recurring PowerShell scripts to automatically discover local admin group members and remediate unauthorized changes, ensuring continuous compliance.
• Integrated approval auditing
  • Attach elevation approvals directly to service tickets, creating a clear, unambiguous audit trail for every privileged access request.
• Centralized documentation
  • Securely store your master rights register and generated evidence packets within the platform, making them instantly available for audits and client QBRs.
• Policy-based access control
  • Create and assign custom device roles and policies to enforce least privilege settings across your entire client base from a single dashboard.

By leveraging NinjaOne’s capabilities, you transform your governance framework from a documented standard into an actively enforced, easily demonstrable reality, providing both operational efficiency and clear evidence of compliance to clients.

Effective local admin rights management for sustainable security

True local admin rights management transforms a major security liability into a controlled, auditable process. By implementing a central register, enforcing time-bound elevations, and maintaining regular reviews, you create a system where privileges are always visible, justified, and temporary.

This structured approach not only drastically reduces your attack surface but also generates clear evidence of compliance, building undeniable trust with clients and auditors alike.

Related topics

• How to Use PowerShell to Find Local Administrators
• How to Audit and Remove Stale Admin Accounts Across Tenants in Active Directory
• How to Build a Temporary Admin Access Policy That Scales Across Clients
• How to Rotate Local Admin Passwords Securely Using PowerShell and Azure Key Vault
• User Roles and Permissions