October 3, 2025

AD Indexing Explained — What Admins Need to Know Active Directory indexing is one of the most overlooked yet critical aspects of directory performance. As AD grows to thousands—or millions—of objects, searches and lookups can slow dramatically if the right attributes aren’t indexed (or if too many are). In simple terms, AD…

Certificate Consolidation for AD Domain Controllers: What You Need to Know Active Directory (AD) remains the backbone of identity, authentication, and authorization in most enterprise Windows environments. Within this ecosystem, domain controllers (DCs) rely heavily on digital certificates to prove their identity, encrypt communications, and establish…

Designing AD for Zero Trust: Practical First Steps Designing AD for Zero Trust (practical first steps) means reshaping your on-premises Active Directory (AD) so that every access request is explicitly verified, least-privileged, and resilient to compromise. Zero Trust is a security model that assumes no implicit trust—inside or outside your network—and continuously validates identity…

Trust management in Active Directory: transitive vs external trusts Trusts are where “directory design” turns into “security reality.” A single trust decision can either enable clean collaboration or quietly expand your blast radius across domains and forests. This guide focuses on the difference that matters most in…

Secure admin enclaves: isolating DC administrative access If your Domain Controller admin credentials touch “normal” endpoints, assume they’ll eventually be stolen. Secure admin enclaves exist to make that theft dramatically harder—and to limit blast radius when something still goes wrong. What is a secure admin enclave? A secure admin…

Service Account Design in Architecture (gMSAs, SPNs, Delegation, and Real-World Patterns) Service accounts are rarely “just accounts.” They’re long-lived identities that sit at the junction of authentication (Kerberos vs NTLM), authorization (AD ACLs), and operational reliability. That combination makes them both critical and dangerous: …

Forest/Domain Consolidation vs Maintaining Separation (Active Directory) A comparison for Active Directory architecture decisions. In modern enterprises, Active Directory (AD) remains the backbone of identity and access management. As organizations expand through mergers, acquisitions, or organic growth, they often end up with multiple forests or…

AD Partition Audit Coverage: Domain, Configuration, Schema – The Foundational Guide Active Directory (AD) is built on directory partitions—logical containers that scope replication, management, and security. The three most critical partitions are Domain, Configuration, and Schema. Auditing these partitions matters because each one holds…