Insights From Thought Leaders Around The Globe
The digital identities of modern enterprises exist in a dynamic environment. Read thought leadership from experts worldwide regarding the constantly changing global IT environment and insights for keeping up with growing demands, and securing against escalating threats and vulnerabilities.
A colleague here at Semperis recently looped me into a conversation with the manager of a large Active Directory environment running on Windows Server 2008 R2. With end of support for Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 coming up soon (officially January 14, 2020), planning is well underway for upgrade of the company’s forest and 110 domain controllers to Windows Server 2016 (the end state selected by this particular company).... Read More
A colleague here at Semperis recently looped me into a conversation with the manager of a large Active Directory environment running on Windows Server 2008 R2. With end of support for Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 coming up soon (officially January 14, 2020), planning is well underway for upgrade of the company’s forest and … Read More
Ransomware and wiper attacks are causing organizations to re-evaluate their backup and recovery capabilities. An obvious concern is whether backups are safe – for example, are they offline where they can’t be encrypted or wiped. While this is a good first step, it’s just that. We also need to evaluate whether the backup and recovery … Read More
Request for Comments (RFC) 1823 from August 1995 introduced the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Application Programming Interface (API). One could argue that this important work served as the foundation for modern identity management. And yet, surprisingly, the word identity does not appear even once in the entire RFC. (The word directory shows up fourteen times and the word access appears … Read More
In part 1 of this blog post, I talked about the threat that DCShadow poses to organizations that use Microsoft Active Directory (AD). Here in part 2, I’ll talk about steps you can take to protect your organization. (Quick recap: DCShadow is a feature of the Mimikatz post-exploitation tool that attackers use to silently create … Read More
DCShadow is a readily available technique that allows an attacker to establish persistent privileged access in Microsoft Active Directory (AD). Specifically, DCShadow allows an attacker with privileged access to create and edit arbitrary objects in AD without anyone knowing. This allows the attacker to create backdoors all over AD that can’t be detected, even if … Read More
July 29, 2019 Update: With over 800,000 Windows systems still unpatched and vulnerable (as of July 2), concern over BlueKeep remains high, especially after a detailed guide on how to write an exploit was posted online last week. Other indications that the vulnerability is not going unnoticed include publication of an exploit and discovery of … Read More
Hi, This is part two of a blog that I had written earlier. The premise of part one was to better understand what are the options that companies face should their Active Directory be compromised. How can they get back up and running as quickly as possible? How can it be done with as many … Read More
Information protection consists of three pillars: confidentiality, integrity and availability. Hybrid Identity is no different; the three pillars still apply. However, availability is hard for Azure AD Connect. As a key link in the Hybrid Identity chain, it should be the focus, but not the only focus. High availability for Azure AD Connect explained About … Read More
If you’ve been following this blog, you know that about 2 and half years ago, I started talking about Group Policy’s precarious role in the typical enterprise’s security posture. Many, if not most, AD shops use GP to perform security hardening on their Windows desktops and servers. This includes everything from tweaking OS settings to … Read More
This is the story of one of the most successful delivery people in the industry……this story captures one of his greatest accomplishments in recent history The Setting: Inside the Loading Dock, at the back of the building of a Global Fortune 500 company (we’ll call it “Global, Inc”) Loading Dock Security: Can we help you? … Read More
