Active Directory Fundamentals

Restricting logon to specific machines: the expert guide Restricting logon to specific machines means enforcing which Windows computers a given user may sign in to—locally or via Remote Desktop—using Active Directory controls such as userWorkstations (“Log On To…”) and computer-side User Rights Assignment policies (“Allow/Deny log on locally” and “Allow/Deny log on…

Handling user SID-related tasks: from first principles to field-tested operations Security identifiers (SIDs) are the nucleus of identity and authorization in Windows and Active Directory. Every access check, every token, every ACL decision hinges on these opaque strings. If you run AD at any real scale, you’ll spend real time handling user SID-related tasks: looking up SIDs…

Principles from Microsoft’s Active Directory Hardening Guidance Microsoft has published years of Active Directory (AD) security guidance across documents, reference architectures, “security hardening” checklists, and the broader identity security model used for Windows, Entra ID, and hybrid environments. The specifics evolve, but the…

Leveraging AD improvements for hybrid cloud usage Hybrid identity is rarely “cloud identity plus legacy AD.” In most enterprises, Active Directory (AD DS) remains the authoritative source for many user and computer identities, authentication policies, and operational workflows—while cloud services depend on Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) and…