Important of Health and Configuration Checks as part of Active Directory Security Assessment

DUBAI, UAE - June 2, 2023 - PRLog -- If you have made the decision to conduct an Active Directory Security Assessment for your production AD Forests, it is crucial to recognize the potential security threats that may exist within your Active Directory environment. However, neglecting to address health and configuration issues poses a significant security risk. In this article, we will explore the importance of performing a "complete" Active Directory assessment, in addition to recommended security tests by organizations such as MITRE and ANSSI.

With DynamicPacks Technologies extensive experience in Active Directory, they have conducted several ADRAP engagements. While ADRAP primarily focused on assessing potential configuration issues and performing health checks on AD components like KCC functionality, domain controller health, Active Directory site related tests, bridgehead, replication topology, ISTG, DC Services, and identifying undefined subnets, it did not give much attention to the security threats we observe in Active Directory environments these days and some of the misconfiguration that we see in Active Directory environments. Therefore, it is important to understand that maintaining a healthy Active Directory environment and resolving all configuration and health issues is imperative in order to eliminate security threats entirely.

Managing Computer Objects with Privileged Accounts: Replication ensures that changes made to computer objects, particularly those involving privileged accounts, are propagated accurately throughout the domain.

Constrained Authentication Delegation to Domain Controller SPNs: Replication plays a key role in maintaining the appropriate delegation of authentication to domain controller SPNs, ensuring that the necessary security measures are in place.

Service Principal Accounts used by Computer and User Accounts: As part of your security assessment, certain computer and user accounts may have been modified. Replication ensures that the changes made to these Service Principal Accounts are properly distributed across all domain controllers.

And more: There are a total of 80 AD Security tests (from MITRE and ANSSI) that rely on replication to ensure that changes are effectively distributed throughout the network, covering a wide range of security aspects.

You can find more information about checks that need to be performed as part of Active Directory Security Assessment here:
https://microsoft-assessment.com/importance-of-health-and...