Chapter 6. Evaluating Scheduled Tasks

Enterprises leverage scheduled tasks for a multitude of purposes. Whether it is to process business transactions or to provide health checks, they have become the standard for running actions on a scheduled basis. Scheduled tasks are flexible, in that they can also be run on logon, after a certain event is triggered, or even manually. Scheduled tasks can run executables, or even start scripts to extend limitless possibilities for automation.

Due to the wide variety of uses for scheduled tasks, it's important to scan them with the Windows server scanning script. This will help you identify processes that only run on a triggered or scheduled basis, such as a quarterly report or a nightly process. It can also be used to identify alternate user accounts that are used to run these scheduled tasks. Since scheduled tasks are so flexible, it's essential to capture what the scheduled tasks are doing, how they are invoked, and what account...