As organizations grow users enter and exit the organization, people change roles, and sometimes when a user leaves the issue of inheriting the accounts that user’s email account is associated with becomes difficult. This is a really common scenario that can be avoided with what Digital Ninja Consulting calls a “utility account”.
Basically, a user account is set up to manage all 3rd party tool set up and configuration. It’s a non user account that becomes the connection point and management point for utilities that organization uses. Or, it can be used as a repository for archived user data.
Let’s start with the utility account for 3rd party tool configuration. This is really important for organizations that are growing. With growth comes waste, noise, and breakdown along with opportunity. By setting up a utility account you are able to configure your organizations YouTube channel, the hosting service for your website, your CRM instance, etc…
This utility account then gives your admins inside of the organization a single account to monitor for all connections to 3rd party applications, and other Google services like YouTube, Analytics, and more. You can restrict who has access and even group the utility accounts into their own sub-organization in Google Admin Console so as to further lay on security measures.
This utility account will cost you one user, but will save you a massive amount of headaches. There can be more than one utility account too. Read more about using a utility account for organizations with seasonal staff or high turnover here.
The bottom line is that if your organization is aiming at a modern infrastructure as service (IaaS or all things in the cloud) leveraging utility accounts to stay secure, focused, and organized is essential.
