Better Active Directory access management is key to preventing an Active Directory (AD) breach. Because once a hacker gets onto the Active Directory server, they have free rein of the organization's most valuable assets. Here's why focusing security on access and putting multiple layers of security beyond user credentials is critical for Active Directory environments.

Active Directory access management is the process of orchestrating user privileges, security policies, and resource allocation in a centralized Windows environment. By providing a single source of truth for identity data and authentication, AD streamlines everything from user onboarding and offboarding to compliance enforcement — ultimately minimizing risk and enhancing organizational efficiency.

Imagine you have a big house with many doors. Access management for Active Directory is like having a guardian who decides who gets the keys to each door. This guardian knows which people are allowed inside and which doors they can open, helping everyone stay safe and keeping things organized.

Roughly 80% of organizations worldwide use Active Directory as their directory service. AD's user identity repository acts as the primary identity provider (IdP), the source of truth for identity and access security.

As we all know, Microsoft developed Active Directory to centralize identification and authentication for Windows domain networks, Active Directory verifies that the Active Directory user is who they say they are, authenticating and authorizing access to resources on the network, applying group policy to enforce security settings across clients and servers in the organization.

Active Directory (AD) access management lies at the heart of any IAM strategy, empowering IT teams to validate user identities, allocate resource privileges, and meet critical compliance requirements. By seamlessly integrating with other IAM solutions, AD creates a unified framework for secure and efficient access management.

Attacks on Active Directory are not a matter of if, but rather when. In nearly every successful attack, threat actors manipulate, encrypt, or destroy Active Directory. Why? There are only a handful of vital IT assets that allow attackers to move within your network after an initial breach, and one towers above them all: Active Directory.

According to Verizon's annual Data Breach Investigations Report, compromised or stolen credentials are involved in almost 80% of successful data breaches. They serve as an entry point into an organization’s network and its information assets. An attacker is powerless to do anything in your organization unless they are able to compromise a set of internal Active Directory credentials.

Now this first access is often a low-level endpoint with no rights to access anything of value. It acts however, as an initial foothold to start lateral movement (the process of jumping machines and elevating privileges to locate and access a system with valuable data).

In fact with the exception of perimeter attacks (where attack methods like SQL injections need no credentials to access data), all layers of access within your environment require a logon at some point. Endpoints require logons for access, lateral movement of any type requires authentication to access a target endpoint, and access to data itself first requires an authenticated connection.

Strong Active Directory access management stops attackers before the threat becomes a breach. Simply put, no logon, no access!

Read how the City of Keizer uses UserLock to enhance access security following a ransomware attack.

Many cybersecurity compliance and regulatory standards hold organizations accountable for controlling access to personal, customer or employee information. This single word "access" represents the process of someone using an account to actively connect to a system and open/read/copy/download sensitive data — an action that begins with that person logging on.

The logon is the most compelling point at which to prove compliance and to stop potentially inappropriate access (read: compliance breach) from happening.

Now, you might ask yourself, why focus on Active Directory access management and not something else, like Next Gen Antivirus or Endpoint Security? It’s a valid question. Unlike most security solutions, which attempt to reside at the point of the malicious actions, access management seeks to stop the threat before damage happens.

As said before, common to every type of attack is the need to logon. Whether accomplished using a remote session, via PowerShell, leveraging a mapping of a drive, or by logging on locally at a console, your network requires that a user authenticate themselves prior to being given any kind of access.

This is one of the most important aspects of your security strategy. Nearly every security solution on the market says they stop attacks. Be careful here — does the solution just alert IT to a threat potential (which only stops an attack once IT intervenes, or perhaps just minimizes the attacker’s exposure, but didn’t actually stop the attack), or does it actually take action and stop the attack?

Unlike security solutions that require an attacker to perform some kind of inappropriate action, such as attempting to access sensitive data, making copies to a USB stick, or attaching files to web-based email, identifying a potential attack with access management occurs before any access of any kind is achieved, let alone leveraged.

Should a logon fall outside a set of established restrictions, it can automatically block access or prompt again for a second factor of authentication. Or if already connected, immediately log a user off forcefully and lock the account, putting a stop to the attack before any malicious actions are taken.

The dreaded part of any security solution is the potential for a storm of alerts that turn out to be false positives. With so many users logging on — and at just about any time of the day — it’s critical that IT have solutions in place that are certain about the attack potential.

Using customized policy-driven controls, Access management is configured based on the normal use of the environment, only providing alerts when a logon is out of policy.

Access management integrates with the existing logon process to extend, not replace security. Solutions that work along the existing Active Directory infrastructure don’t frustrate IT teams. They are simple to implement and intuitive to manage.

If security overwhelms and stifles productivity, users can’t do their job and the solution is already dead on arrival. Access management offers security behind the scenes, protecting the users and the environment until the moment the user is truly conflicting with security protocol.

Can you imagine if you had to train every single user and IT member on how to use some new security solution? It would be a non-starter. Access management focused on Active Directory requires zero training, simplifying implementation in any type of organization.

With "never trust, always verify" as its motto, the zero trust model recognizes the need to see and verify every access event (or attempted access) and monitor user access within in the network. Customized MFA prompts and granular access restrictions help IT implement specific access controls, get alerts, and respond on users with higher risk status.

Security doesn’t have to come at a high cost — but it does have to be effective. Access management, when well implemented, offers highly effective security at a relatively low cost.