What happened
The widely used Active Directory (AD) is under heightened threat as adversaries target it as a gateway into enterprise networks. Attackers are leveraging techniques such as Golden Ticket attacks, DCSync replication abuse, and Kerberoasting to gain domain-level control. The hybrid nature of many deployments, which span on-premises controllers, cloud synchronization, and legacy protocols, has expanded the attack surface and introduced visibility gaps.
Who is affected
More than 90% of Fortune 1000 companies rely on Active Directory for authentication and authorization. That means any organisation using AD (on-premises, hybrid, or cloud-sync) is potentially vulnerable. Sectors with complex identity estates, such as healthcare, critical infrastructure, and financial services, are particularly at risk.
Why CISOs should care
For CISOs, this is a high‑stakes issue because AD serves as the “master key” to the enterprise. If compromised, attackers can create accounts, elevate privileges, modify permissions, disable controls, and move laterally with minimal detection. With hybrid and cloud‑synced environments adding complexity (e.g., legacy protocols like NTLM remaining enabled, OAuth token compromise, sync misconfigurations), the risk of compromise escalates. Given that standard detection tools often struggle to distinguish legitimate AD operations from malicious ones, this becomes a blind spot in the identity security posture.
3 Practical Actions
- Strengthen credential hygiene and password policies
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- Enforce strong password policies, block usage of credentials found in breach databases, and deploy continuous monitoring for compromised credentials.
- Review service accounts to ensure they have minimal permissions, enforce the expiry or rotation of passwords, and avoid using non-expiring accounts.
- Apply privileged access and zero‑trust controls around AD
- Segregate administrative accounts from standard user accounts; enforce just‑in‑time access and route admin tasks through dedicated privileged access workstations.
- Deploy multifactor authentication (MFA) for all privileged accounts and adopt conditional access policies (e.g., device health, location, behavior) to reduce implicit trust.
- Improve visibility, patch cadence, and hybrid environment controls
- Implement continuous monitoring of AD changes (group membership, replication events, permission grants) and configure alerts for suspicious patterns (off‑hours admin operations, large‑scale replication).
- Ensure that domain controllers (both on-premises and cloud-synced) are fully patched and updates are deployed rapidly, as attackers actively scan for unpatched systems.
- In hybrid/connected deployments, map the flow between on‑premises AD, Azure AD (or other cloud ID), sync services, and legacy protocol use. Disable legacy protocols, such as NTLM or LDAP simple bind, where possible; restrict identity sync paths and audit them.