Why is AD hardening essential?

Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft that enables organizations to centrally manage users, resources, applications and security policies within a Windows environment. It provides authentication, authorization and policy enforcement across networks. It is one of the most critical components of an organization's IT infrastructure.

AD hardening is the process of securing the environment by reducing attack surfaces, enforcing necessary policies and configurations. This process reduces the organization’s exposure to threats and risks, thereby strengthening its overall security posture.

Why is AD hardening essential?

Since AD is the backbone of any organization, it is a prime target for cyber adversaries. Without AD hardening, attackers can compromise your environment easily, leading to an organization-wide impact.

For example, if an attacker compromises a single privileged domain account through credential theft, they may move laterally and deploy ransomware across the network. This results in sensitive data encrypted, operational downtime, significant financial losses, and reputational damage.

Additionally, regulatory standards such as the GDPR, NIS2, and HIPAA require organizations to implement necessary security measures. AD hardening is therefore not only a best practice but a compliance necessity.

AD hardening checklist

1. Enforce least privilege access

   Apply the principle of least privilege (PLoP) across the environment to ensure users only have the minimum requirements to perform their everyday operations.

   Implement role-based access control (RBAC) to provide distinct rights to administrators and technicians in your environment, eliminating the chances of privilege misuse or overuse.

2. Implement authentication measures

   Authentication mechanisms, such as MFA, add an additional layer of user and identity verification beyond the native password check. This reduces the risk of password spraying and phishing-based attacks.

3. Establish stringent password and account lockout policy

   Impose strong password policies by regulating minimum length and complexity requirements, restricting weak or commonly used passwords. Organizations should implement account lockout policies that define the lockout threshold, the duration of the lockout, and the time period after which the account is automatically unlocked.

4. Secure local administrator accounts

   Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) randomizes passwords of local admin accounts, prevents shared local admin credentials, and automatically updates them periodically. Implementing this prevents attacks using local administrators to breach into your AD environment.

5. Enable advanced audit policies

   Continuous monitoring is critical for early detection of malicious activity and to identify root-causes behind incidents. Enabling advanced audit policies in GPOs helps with monitoring user logon events, privilege use, group membership changes, policy changes, and administrative actions. This provides granular and in-depth insights into account usage and critical AD changes.

6. Network segmentation

   This is the process of dividing a large network into multiple isolated subnets. By segmenting, only administrators have access to subnets with critical resources such as domain controllers and can apply more stringent security policies to them. This prevents any lateral movement during an active attack.

7. Utilize group Managed Service Accounts (gMSAs)

   Service accounts are often exploited because they have static passwords, elevated privileges and are rarely monitored. With gMSAs implemented, service accounts' passwords are periodically updated thereby minimizing any credential compromise risks.

How ADAudit Plus helps in AD hardening

ManageEngine ADAudit Plus provides a single pane of reporting for all AD changes. It provides real-time, UBA-driven insights to detect suspicious and risky changes. With ADAudit Plus, you can gain full visibility into object modifications, logons, account lockouts, permission changes, file activity, and more.

With ADAudit Plus, you can:

1. Monitor changes made to critical AD objects such as users, computers, groups, OUs, and GPOs, along with their attributes, using real-time change monitoring.
2. Track logon activities including interactive, remote, local, and network logins with user logon tracking.
3. Analyze and resolve every account lockout in your environment using the Account Lockout Analyze r.
4. Validate GPO settings employed across your domain controllers (DC), Windows servers , and workstations against CIS Benchmarks® with the GPO change auditor.
5. Identify anomalies in user logon behavior , user activities, and processes executed using User Behavior Analytics .
6. Audit Windows servers logons, replication status, and track employee productivity with Windows Server auditing .
7. Monitor the integrity of crucial system files, logs, program files, and other high-risk files with dedicated reports using File Integrity Monitoring .
8. Track changes made to by administrators and technicians using the Administrative Actions report .
9. Instantly detect more than 25 indicators of AD attacks, including brute-force attempts, privilege escalations, and risky configurations, using the Attack Surface Analyzer. Attack Surface Analyzer .
10. Monitor who accessed a local administrator's password and track modifications to password expiration dates with LAPS auditing reports.