Active Directory Domain Services Auditing

Best Practices to Secure Active Directory- Audit and Privileged Access Management

Table of Contents:
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................. 2
The Significance of Active Directory Security: ........................................................................................................... 2
Default Security Settings: .................................................................................................................................. 3
Excessive Access Privileges: ............................................................................................................................... 3
Weak Admin Passwords: ................................................................................................................................... 3
Unpatched Vulnerabilities: ................................................................................................................................ 3
How to secure Active Directory: ......................................................................................................................... 3
Active Directory audit: checklist, goals, and best practices. ........................................................................................ 4
Why audit Active Directory?.............................................................................................................................. 4
Auditing Active Directory helps businesses reduce security risks, such as: ........................................................... 4
What Should Active Directory Audits Cover? ............................................................................................................ 5
Active Directory auditing best practices .................................................................................................................... 5
Best Practices for Securing Active Directory ....................................................................................................... 5
Securing Active Directory with PAM: Benefits and Best Practices .............................................................................. 6
Best practices for securing active directory with PAM ............................................................................................... 7
1. Keep an inventory of all privileged accounts: ............................................................................................. 7
2. Balance privileges with user needs: ............................................................................................................ 7
3. Use multi-factor authentication ................................................................................................................. 8
4. Manage access controls ............................................................................................................................. 8
5. Monitor the behavior of privileged users .................................................................................................... 8
6. Manage shared accounts ........................................................................................................................... 9
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................... 9
Introduction
Active Directory (AD) is an essential IT Service Administrative tool for organizations to manage identities and regulate access
to network resources, playing a key role in strengthening corporate cybersecurity. However, improper management of AD can
expose organizations to risks, potentially compromising sensitive assets and operational stability. This article provides a concise
overview of Active Directory, highlights its primary services, and examines potential threats. Additionally, it delves into essential
AD security best practices, focusing on two effective strategies for safeguarding AD: conducting Active Directory audits and
implementing privileged access management (PAM).

The Significance of Active Directory Security:

Active Directory (AD) is a critical service designed to help administrators manage permissions and control access to network
resources. Developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks, AD plays a vital role in streamlining user authentication and
access management. By assigning permissions based on identity, it ensures that users and computers can securely access the
applications and files they need.
AD enhances efficiency for administrators by simplifying the management of access privileges. Additionally, its robust
architecture includes support for redundancy and data replication, ensuring resilience and minimizing potential downtime.

In Active Directory, data is stored as objects. These objects can represent resources, such as applications or devices, or security
principals, such as users or groups. This object-oriented structure allows for a flexible and secure way to manage network
resources effectively. Given its central role in network security and access management, protecting Active Directory is essential
to safeguarding organizational data and operations.
Most common threats to Active Directory:
Active Directory serves as a critical tool for user authentication and authorization, making it a frequent target for cybercriminals.
Threat actors, whether external or internal, often seek to compromise AD to gain access to an organization's user accounts,
databases, files, applications, and sensitive information.

Default Security Settings:

Windows Active Directory comes with predefined security configurations provided by Microsoft. While convenient, these
settings are often insufficient to meet the unique security needs of your organization. Hackers, being well-acquainted with these
default configurations, can leverage this knowledge to identify and exploit vulnerabilities within your Active Directory.

Excessive Access Privileges:

Granting users or groups broader access rights than necessary poses a significant security risk. When users are provided with
privileges beyond what’s required for their roles, it increases the likelihood of misuse—whether intentional or accidental.
Furthermore, if privileged accounts are compromised, attackers can gain direct access to your organization's most critical
systems and sensitive data.

Weak Admin Passwords:

Administrative accounts are prime targets for brute force attacks. Hackers often exploit weak or easily guessable passwords,
making it imperative to enforce robust password policies. Failure to do so leaves your organization vulnerable to unauthorized
access and data breaches.

Unpatched Vulnerabilities:
Timely updates and patching are essential for maintaining the security of Active Directory servers. Neglecting to address known
vulnerabilities in applications or operating systems provides an open door for attackers to infiltrate your IT environment.

Key Measurement for Securing your Active Directory

• Active Directory audit
• Privileged access management

How to secure Active Directory:

Since a security compromise of Active Directory can sabotage the integrity of your organization’s IT environment, it’s essential
to apply preventive measures and keep an eye on AD protection. To do that, you should regularly perform an Active Directory
security audit and establish privileged access management (PAM) within your organization.
Let’s start by exploring the basics of the Active Directory auditing process and best practices for it.

Active Directory audit: checklist, goals, and best practices.

As we already mentioned, Active Directory requires robust security measures. A crucial aspect of safeguarding your AD
environment is through Active Directory auditing.

Active Directory auditing is a set of actions aimed at evaluating the overall security of your AD services. This comprehensive
process goes beyond simply collecting data; it involves strategically monitoring and analyzing activities within your AD
infrastructure.

Why audit Active Directory?

When done properly, Active Directory audits can help you improve security, promptly identify and respond to threats, and
maintain smooth IT operations. There are three main goals of AD audits:

Auditing Active Directory helps businesses reduce security risks, such as:
▪ Deeply nested groups that can be challenging to track. AD offers almost unlimited possibilities to create nested groups
(groups that are members of other groups). And since nested groups inherit the same access rights as parent groups, there’s
a risk of users having unnecessarily extensive permissions.
▪ Directly assigned permissions that attackers can exploit to gain access to network resources.
▪ Circular nesting that can cause security issues, such as providing users with too many application permissions or causing
applications to crash.
Finally, security auditing of Active Directory plays a crucial role in helping organizations meet various IT cybersecurity
standards. These standards, laws, and regulations commonly require organizations to safeguard sensitive client data and maintain
strict access controls. Utilizing a dedicated compliance tool—such as those designed for SOX, GDPR, HIPAA, or SOC 2—that
includes Active Directory auditing capabilities allows you to monitor user activities across your IT infrastructure. This includes
tracking critical actions like logins, logoffs, and access to files and folders, ensuring compliance and enhanced security.
What Should Active Directory Audits Cover?
Understanding how to audit Active Directory effectively and knowing what to monitor can provide critical insights into user
activity and system changes. These insights are invaluable for identifying suspicious behavior and mitigating potential security
threats. Below is a checklist of key areas your security team should focus on during an Active Directory audit:

Active Directory audit checklist

User access rights Granting, modification, or elevation of privileges
Creation, modification, and deletion of user accounts Logon and logoff events
Inactive accounts Default Active Directory settings
Replicated Active Directory data Password changes
Activities of administrators and other privileged users Object access attempts

Active Directory audits should report on key user activities and system changes, such as account management, group
memberships, logon attempts, password changes, and object access attempts.

Active Directory auditing best practices

Every organization has its own strategy to secure Active Directory with an audit, but the most effective Active Directory auditing
best practices are as follows:
▪ Review and change default security settings
▪ Limit the number of privileged users
▪ Audit account logon and logoff events
▪ Remove inactive and obsolete accounts
▪ Use real-time Windows auditing and alerting
▪ Ensure AD backup and recovery
▪ Patch all vulnerabilities regularly
▪ Automate alerting workflows

Best Practices for Securing Active Directory

1. Regularly Review and Update Security Settings
Default AD security settings may not align with your organization's specific requirements. Strengthen security by
regularly evaluating and updating configurations such as password complexity, account lockout policies, and group
membership permissions.
2. Minimize Privileged User Accounts
Privileged accounts provide unrestricted access, increasing the risk of misuse or abuse. Limit privileged access strictly
to authorized personnel and adopt the principle of least privilege to ensure users have only the permissions necessary
to perform their tasks.
3. Monitor Account Logon and Logoff Events
Track user logon and logoff activities to detect suspicious behavior, such as access attempts from unusual locations or
outside standard hours. Regular monitoring helps identify potential security breaches and enables timely investigation.
4. Disable Inactive and Obsolete Accounts
Dormant accounts are a significant security risk, as they can be exploited by attackers. Conduct periodic user access
reviews to identify and deactivate inactive or obsolete accounts, enhancing AD security and reducing the attack surface.
5. Implement Real-Time Auditing and Alerts
Scheduled audits might overlook critical real-time events. Integrate real-time monitoring and alerting into your security
framework to receive immediate notifications of potential threats, enabling faster response times and mitigating risks.
 6. Ensure Regular AD Backup and Recovery
Maintain consistent backups of your AD data to safeguard against cyberattacks, accidental deletions, and other incidents.
Reliable backups enable quick restoration of essential data, minimizing downtime and business disruption.
7. Patch Vulnerabilities Promptly
Unpatched software can leave your system exposed to cyberattacks. Regularly install security updates to address
vulnerabilities and protect sensitive data from unauthorized access.
8. Automate Audit and Alert Workflows
Manual log monitoring is both time-consuming and inefficient. Automate the process of analyzing logs and generating
alerts for critical events, allowing your IT team to focus on investigating and mitigating threats effectively.
By following these best practices, along with implementing Privileged Access Management (PAM) strategies, you can
significantly enhance the security of your Active Directory environment. PAM offers additional safeguards, helping you manage
privileged access more effectively and reducing the risk of unauthorized activity.

Securing Active Directory with PAM: Benefits and Best Practices

Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a robust cybersecurity approach designed to safeguard, control, monitor, and audit
privileged identities—both human and non-human—across an organization's IT ecosystem. Implementing a strong PAM
strategy is essential for protecting critical data and systems, particularly when addressing risks associated with Active Directory
(AD).
Since AD is managed by privileged accounts, any compromise of these accounts can grant malicious actors unauthorized access
to sensitive systems and data. By centering a PAM solution around your AD environment, you create a centralized, monitored
platform to manage and delegate privileged access effectively.
Adopting a PAM approach to secure AD provides numerous benefits:
• Identify Users with Elevated Privileges: Gain visibility into who has administrative rights.
• Detect Unnecessary Broad Access: Flag users with excessive permissions and align them with their roles.
• Centralized Management of Privileged Accounts: Streamline oversight and control from a single interface.
• Mitigate Privilege Misuse Risks: Minimize the potential for data breaches and insider threats.
By integrating PAM with Active Directory, organizations can significantly reduce vulnerabilities while strengthening overall IT
security.
Best practices for securing active directory with PAM
To get the most out of leveraging PAM to secure your AD environment, let’s explore six helpful best practices for establishing
proper privileged access management:

1. Keep an inventory of all privileged accounts:

Active Directory monitoring best practices include increasing visibility and managing privileged accounts. Keeping an
inventory of all privileged accounts will help you: Know which users can access sensitive data Check that privileged access
is still necessary for certain users Remove elevated access rights once a user doesn’t require them anymore.
Why keep an inventory of privileged accounts?

The resultant list of privileged accounts is determined by the access control solution or directory service you are using. In
Active Directory, default groups of privileged accounts include:
▪ Enterprise Admins
▪ Domain Admins
▪ Administrators
▪ Schema Admins.
However, there can be other groups of privileged accounts within your organization’s infrastructure. Compiling and
managing a list of privileged accounts manually is inefficient, especially for a large organization. Instead, you can use a
cybersecurity tool that can automatically discover and display all privileged accounts. You may also want to follow system
administration best practices to protect your privileged user accounts.

2. Balance privileges with user needs:

The fewer access privileges you grant a user, the lower the risk of their misusing these privileges and causing an insider-
related incident. However, it’s often a challenge to minimize privileges without impacting employee efficiency.
To overcome this challenge, consider using one or more of the following techniques:
 ▪ Zero trust is a security approach in which access to protected resources is only granted to authenticated and verified users.
▪ The principle of least privilege states that users should be able to access only the information and resources that are
necessary for a legitimate purpose.
▪ Just-in-time privileged access management (JIT PAM) means that only the right users can be provided with privileged
access to certain systems and resources, only for a valid reason, and only for a specific time.

3. Use multi-factor authentication

Since even strong and secured credentials can be stolen or leaked, it’s always a good idea to enable multi-factor
authentication (MFA). With MFA, users provide something they possess like a key, security token, or smartphone to verify
their identity in addition to login and password. Thus, you minimize the risks of unauthorized access to Active Directory.

4. Manage access controls

Efficiently managing access controls is a surefire way to minimize security risks related to excessive access rights. There
are two models that address this: role-based access control (RBAC) and attribute-based access control (ABAC).
Role-based access control Attribute-based access control
An access control method that assigns every employee a role. An access control method in which attributes can be modified
An employee can access objects and execute operations only for the needs of a particular user without creating a new role.
if their role in the system has relevant permissions.

With the RBAC model, you can easily authorize, restrict, and revoke access for certain groups of users instead of
dealing with each user independently. However, you can’t assign permissions to objects and operations, just as you
can’t restrict access to certain data within a system.

The ABAC model provides you with the opportunity to describe a business rule of any complexity. For example,
you can allow employees to access certain data only during work hours. On the downside, specifying and maintaining
such complex policies makes an ABAC system challenging to configure.

5. Monitor the behavior of privileged users

Privileged user monitoring is a common practice within organizations as it helps you know what data users access
and what changes they make.
In addition to access monitoring, you can also monitor the behavior of privileged users. Thus, you will be able to
detect abnormalities in how users act, which can be a sign of malicious activity or a compromised account.
In Active Directory Domain, you should be able to establish robust monitoring of privileged user activity and leverage
the following benefits:

• Monitor, record, and audit all privileged user sessions on selected endpoints
• Continue recording a session in offline mode if the server connection is lost
• Detect abnormal actions and instantly notify security officers about them

6. Manage shared accounts

While unsafe, organizations tend to use shared accounts for network administration or working with third-party
services. Thus, different users can log in to the same account under the same credentials to perform certain work-
related activities.
• But without proper management, shared accounts can become a source of cybersecurity threats, leaving you
unable to identify the particular individual behind an incident.

First and foremost, you should review all shared accounts and check whether shared access is in fact required. If not, remove
permissions for users who don’t need them. For the remaining shared accounts, it’s best to enable secondary authentication.
This way, you’ll be able to distinguish the actions of particular users performed under a shared account and investigate any
security incidents that occur.

Conclusion

Keeping your Active Directory environment protected from possible misuse and attacks is a significant part of an effective
cybersecurity strategy. Implementing our best practices for securing Active Directory — privileged access management and
regular AD audits — will ensure the security of your organization’s most critical assets.