This article discusses protected accounts and groups in Active Directory, providing examples and screenshots to illustrate key concepts. In this article, I'll cover the following topics: * Protected accounts in Active Directory * Protected groups in Active Directory * How to create and manage protected accounts and groups I'll also provide some examples and screenshots to help illustrate key concepts. Please note that all screenshots and text examples were captured on a Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine for testing purposes. I logged onto the VM (a DC) as the built-in Administrator. I did the same thing with each of the test accounts and groups I created. I did several things that you should never do (unless you're just trying to get a blog post finished and are going to shut down the virtual machine as soon as you're done). I admit it. I am a terrible blogger when it comes to timeliness and consistency of post intervals. I actually have a half-dozen posts queued up for publication, but each needs to be scrubbed and fleshed out before I post them, so even though I may be slow to get them out, please know that there are definitely more in this series. In the "Don't do as I do" category...