Adding Account Lockout Security Feature To Windows.

Adding Account Lockout Security Feature To Windows.

Windows has  user account which can be of computer administrator's or other users of that computer. If you have a administrator account in your computer and you had set some restrictions for other users due to some reasons like keeping the data confidentiality and protecting other aspects on that computer. Then naturally some of the user can wish to remove those restriction by logging into your administrator account. Obviously, they wouldn't know the password but they can guess that by trying several login attempts.
Now, you will need to add some restrictions for login attempts for those type of user. Account lockout policy is the security feature that lock a account for a set time after number of failed login attempts set by you.

Windows operating system has already this feature, all you need to do is to configure it according to your convenience and use. In this post I will suggest you how to configure it.

HOW TO SET ACCOUNT LOCKOUT SECURITY FEATURE.

I will explain you to setup account lockout feature for Windows 7 and it will be similar for few previous version of Windows like Windows XP.
Any user of a computer can set this account lock for the own user account.
Follow the step below :

• Go to Control Panel and then select Administrative Tools.
• Now, open Local Security Policy.
• Now Local Security Policy window will open, click on Security Setting >>Account Policies in the left panel of this window.

 

• Now open Account Lockout Policy.

 Account Lockout Policy options will open which include Account lockout duration, Account lockout threshold and Reset account lockout counter after as shown in above image.

Account lockout duration:- This policy is for setting the duration for the lockout of account after number of failed login attempts (number can be set by user). The duration can be in the range of  0 minutes through 99,999 minutes.
To set duration Double click on Account lockout duration and set your duration in the new dialog box opens. But before setting duration you will need to define Account lockout threshold.

Account lockout threshold:- This policy is for setting the number of failed login attempts that any user can made before locking an account. You can set a value between 0 and 999 failed logon attempts. If you set the value to 0, the account will never be locked out.

Reset account lockout counter after:- This policy specifies the length in minutes after which the counter will reset if there have been no failed attempts. The available range is 1 minute to 99,999 minutes.

Note:- To define "account lockout duration" and "reset account lockout counter after", first of all you have to set up "Account lockout threshold". For more information about each policy you can double click that policy then a dialog window will open, then click on "Explain" Tab to know more about them.