Active Directory, for too many, is a mysterious “black box” that simply runs in the background or is a problem for all the company’s ills.  

Active Directory is the heart and soul of an organization, housing the identities, keys, and configurations of the assets of the organization. Active Directory, as a directory service, does more than just store resources including configuration management of hosts and Microsoft applications via Group Policy Objects, Public Key Infrastructure, file services, and much more. Active Directory provides an extensive suite of services for an organization. Its extensibility and flexibility can also be its weaknesses especially with a lack of skilled planners, lack of skilled operators, and a lack of understanding (or appreciation of Active Directory) particularly from management. 

 Securing Active Directory continues to be a challenge for many organizations due to a multitude of factors including: 

• Lack of skilled personnel in the design, implementation, and operation of Active Directory. 
• Monitoring of Active Directory (or the lack thereof) along with the proper metrics of what to monitor. 
• Rogue administration. 
• Improper, bad, or unknown delegations in the background. This can provide attack paths for infiltrators to maneuver and seize accounts and assets. 
• Improper design of accesses. 
• Overloaded administrative groups including Domain and Enterprise Admins … the keys to the kingdom. If these accounts are seized by an infiltrator, it is game over for your organization. 
• No standards in the design, build, deployment, and demotion of domain controllers. 
• Little to no documentation of the domains and forests of the organization. 
• No procedures concerning the management or lifecycle of Active Directory. 
• No complete, tested, and validated Active Directory business continuity and disaster recovery plans … or even if Active Directory is RECOVERABLE … 
• Poor patch and vulnerability management. 
• No versioning control of Group Policy Objects in addition to who did what to GPOs. 

This all adds up to lack of insight, opaque operations, unauthorized changes, and ultimately downtime … or being caught out there flapping in the wind. 

Active Directory requires firm command-and-control over its operations, deep insight into its operations, true understanding of its capabilities, and when and how to deploy those capabilities. 

CyberLake Security has over 90+ years of experience with Active Directory (We all have worked with Active Directory since the days of Windows NT). From migrations to operations, CyberLake security has the expertise you need for Active Directory. Give us a call at 269-201-2011 or e-mail us at [email protected] today to witness our expertise for yourself.