Active Directory Fundamentals

Deploying Deception Techniques in Active Directory (AD): A Practical Defender’s Playbook Deception in Active Directory is about placing high-signal, low-risk traps where real attackers naturally go—so you detect early, confirm intent faster, and reduce time-to-contain. Done well, deception doesn’t replace monitoring; it amplifies it by turning attacker curiosity into reliable alerts.

Top 10 Audit Logs for Threat Detection in Active Directory Active Directory (AD) doesn’t get “hacked” in a single step—attackers authenticate, escalate, move laterally, and persist. Your best early-warning system is a carefully chosen set of audit logs, collected consistently from the right hosts (especially domain controllers). On this page …

LSASS (Local Security Authority Subsystem Service) is the Windows process that handles interactive logons and manages authentication-related secrets in memory. Because it sits at the center of Windows authentication, attackers often try to access or dump LSASS memory to steal credentials or reusable secrets. This guide focuses on defensive detection, triage, and response—what to look…

1) What is a “shadow admin” in AD? A shadow admin is any user, group, or service principal that can achieve admin outcomes—such as modifying privileged group membership, controlling GPOs, resetting admin credentials, or replicating directory secrets—without being a direct member of obvious privileged groups. Why they’re hard to spot They hide in structure…

Responding to AD Security Incidents in Real Time (Active Directory IR Playbook) Active Directory is both your identity backbone and (when compromised) your blast radius amplifier. “Real-time response” in AD isn’t about heroics—it’s about making fast, reversible, evidence-safe moves that stop privilege spread while you preserve the truth of what…

Analyzing DCSync Attack Patterns: Detection Signals, Baselines, and Response (Active Directory) Threat Detection AD Security Incident Response Replication Abuse DCSync is one of those attacks that feels “too quiet for how catastrophic it is.” It doesn’t need malware on a domain controller, and it can look like normal…

Detecting Abuse of GPO Permissions: What to Monitor, How to Investigate, How to Prevent If an attacker can edit a GPO, they can often achieve silent, scalable code execution across fleets. This guide shows how to detect that abuse (and how to reduce your blast radius when it happens). Table of contents Why GPO-permission abuse is high…

Building a Response Playbook for Active Directory Compromise (Step-by-Step) Incident Response Active Directory Security Containment & Recovery When Active Directory (AD) is compromised, the attacker isn’t just “in one server” — they often have the keys to your identity kingdom. …