Active Directory Security & Identity Protection

For many enterprises, Active Directory (AD) is the central hub of identity and access management – controlling user logins, computer accounts, and permissions. As such, it’s a crown jewel for attackers. AD Security & Identity Protection technology focuses on safeguarding this critical infrastructure from abuse, misconfiguration, and exploitation.

Active Directory is complex and can be prone to configuration drift and legacy issues (think of organizations that have accumulated groups, policies, and trust relationships over years). Attackers commonly exploit misconfigurations like overly permissive privileges, unmanaged service accounts, or weak authentication protocols. They use techniques like Pass-the-Hash, Golden Ticket (forged Kerberos tickets), and DCSync to silently move within AD and eventually gain domain admin control, which effectively gives them the keys to the kingdom.

Technologies in this space perform continuous auditing of AD settings, permissions, and state. They can visualize relationships to spot privilege escalation paths, detect anomalous changes in real time, and enforce best practices. For example, they might alert if a sensitive group (like Domain Admins) gets a new member, or if someone creates a replication request for AD data (which could be a DCSync attack).

Our solution from Forestall – FSProtect – provides such capabilities. It maps out your AD environment and pinpoints weaknesses or misconfigurations that could be leveraged in an attack. It will identify things like accounts with admin rights that maybe shouldn’t have them, or computers that are not receiving proper security updates in AD. Additionally, it might highlight aging accounts or credentials (accounts that haven’t logged in for 90 days, indicating they could be obsolete and a security risk if enabled) and enforce password policy compliance.

Another aspect is monitoring AD authentication and tickets. Some advanced AD security tools can detect unusual Kerberos ticket requests or NTLM authentication patterns, which could indicate someone performing recon or trying known AD attacks. If an attacker tries to create a Golden Ticket, for instance, a well-tuned AD monitoring tool could notice the abnormal ticket properties.

Identity Protection extends beyond AD to identity providers in the cloud (like Azure AD or others in hybrid setups). It often includes multi-factor authentication (MFA) enforcement, single sign-on security, and conditional access policies to ensure only the right people, devices, and contexts get access to resources.

In essence, AD and identity security tech aims to shrink the attack surface around identities (which are a favorite target) and provide early detection of any suspicious behavior involving user accounts or directory services. Since a compromised admin account can undermine all other security controls, protecting those accounts and the directory is paramount. By employing these technologies, organizations can prevent attackers from readily escalating privileges and also fulfill compliance requirements for identity management (like ensuring only authorized personnel have certain accesses, with proof of continuous enforcement).