At BSides Northern Virginia (BSides NoVa) in October 2025, I presented a talk on how to improve Entra ID security quickly. This post captures the key information from my talk slides. This article describes the Entra ID settings and configuration that should be set to improve security including: User Default Configurations Users are able to … Continue reading| Active Directory & Azure AD/Entra ID Security
My BSides NoVA talk on Saturday, October 11, 2025 was titled “10 Ways to Improve Entra ID Security Quickly“. I focused on the areas that tend to be missed in Entra ID.Talk slides are now posted. Downoad Presentation Slides| Active Directory & Azure AD/Entra ID Security
A couple years ago, the Microsoft Security Experts Blog interviewed me regarding Azure Active Directory (Entra ID) security. Read the Interview here| Active Directory & Azure AD/Entra ID Security
Review the membership of groups for accounts and groups from another Active Directory forest (technically another domain, but using forest here). These are called “Foreign Security Principals” (FSPs) like the ones highlighted in the image. These FSPs are accounts that exist in another forest but have rights in the AD forest. Any FSPs should be … Continue reading| Active Directory & Azure AD/Entra ID Security
I have mentioned in several presentations that Kerberos delegation is impersonation. Kerberos delegation is used when a service (ex. web server) needs to impersonate a user when connecting to a resource (ex. database). There are a 4 types of Kerberos delegation: Unconstrained delegation should be converted to constrained delegation due to security concerns. Any Kerberos … Continue reading| Active Directory & Azure AD/Entra ID Security
During the Summer of 2024, I had a talk at Troopers called “A Decade of Active Directory Attacks:What We’ve Learned & What’s Next” (Slides & Video) where I focused on the key milestones of Active Directory security (history). This article covers my “decade of Active Directory attacks” in some detail which was correlated with public … Continue reading| Active Directory & Azure AD/Entra ID Security
The Print Spooler service is a default service on Windows Servers and is set to run at startup. There are a number of attacks that are enabled by having the Print Spooler service running on Domain Controllers (ex.: Printer Bug: https://adsecurity.org/?p=4056) At this point it’s best to configure a GPO to disable the Print Spooler … Continue reading| Active Directory & Azure AD/Entra ID Security
Getting Microsoft supported backups of Domain Controllers is an important part of recovery strategy. A best practice is to locate all Flexible Master Single Operator (FSMO) roles on a single DC in the domain. That way you can more easily target the DC that hosts the FSMOs for backup. PowerShell code to check for FSMO … Continue reading| Active Directory & Azure AD/Entra ID Security
Microsoft supported backups of Active Directory are very important to have. For backing up Domain Controllers, this is typically a System State backup. Why a Microsoft supported backup? If you are using a backup solution that isn't fully AD aware, performing a restore may involve getting Microsoft involved and that costs $$. I know companies ...| Active Directory & Azure AD/Entra ID Security
The domain Kerberos service account, KRBTGT (https://adsecurity.org/?p=483), is an important account since it is used to sign & encrypt Kerberos tickets. The account is disabled and the password doesn’t change except when moving from Windows 2000/2003 to Windows Server 2008 (or newer). This is a highly privileged account and if an attacker can gain knowledge … Continue reading| Active Directory & Azure AD/Entra ID Security
This article is a cross-post from TrimarcSecurity.comOriginal article: https://www.trimarcsecurity.com/single-post/2019/02/12/Mitigating-Exchange-Permission-Paths-to-Domain-Admins-in-Active-Directory The Issue Recently a blog post was published by Dirk-jan Mollema titled "Abusing Exchange: One API call away from Domain Admin " (https://dirkjanm.io/abusing-exchange-one-api-call-away-from-domain-admin/)which highlighted several issues with Exchange permissions and a chained attack which would ...| Active Directory & Azure AD/Entra ID Security
