On the last March 7th, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) issued a new emergency amendment requiring regulated airlines and airports to increase their capacity to face cyber attacks. The measure was taken less than a week after the United States government announced its national cyber security strategy, following similar requirements directed at freight and passenger rail carriers.

According to the issued statement, TSA’s priority is to protect the United States transportation system, working collaboratively with stakeholders and offering safe, secure, and efficient travel. This was necessary due to hackers who have attacked the aviation industry using different invasion methods.

In July 2022, American Airlines was a victim of a phishing attack, granting unauthorized access to its IT environment. In addition, various airports in the United States were targeted by DDoS attacks in October of the same year.

For this reason, regulated entities affected by the TSA must promote the following actions:

• Develop network segmentation policies and controls, ensuring that operational technology systems continue to function securely in case of a compromise of IT;
• Create access control measures, protecting critical systems from unauthorized access;
• Implement continuous monitoring and detection policies and procedures to identify and respond to cyber security threats and anomalies; and
• Reduce the risks of exploitation of uncorrected systems by applying security patches and updates on operating systems, applications, drivers, and firmware through a risk-based methodology.

Previously imposed requirements for aircraft operators and airports include establishing a cyber security point of contact, developing and adopting a cyber security incident response plan, conducting a cyber security vulnerability assessment, and reporting significant cyber security incidents to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Conclusion

In conclusion, the new amendment issued by the TSA is their latest effort to ensure that transportation operators improve their ability to address cyber threats. In this article, we covered its goals and importance.

According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the world ended 2020 with 300 billion passwords to protect. And the trend shows this number will increase dramatically. Email accounts (personal and professional), banking services, corporate systems, devices, and applications are some examples that require authentication through passwords. And with the increase in the number of data leaks, it is easy to find compromised credentials on forums on the dark web being sold for pennies.

And yes, we know that it is not easy to manage so many passwords. Even the most tech-savvy can struggle to manage and protect credentials in so many different environments. In times of personal data protection legislation, such as LGPD and GDPR, ensuring the protection of such data has become more than a security requirement – it is a business must.

Despite all the risks associated with their use, many users and companies use passwords that are easy to guess, such as numbers or sequential letters (123456 or abcdef). SolarWinds itself, the victim of a serious attack on its supply chain, was using the password solarwinds123 in its infrastructure. Certainly, your email password or mine is stronger than the one used by this American technology company.

So, on this World Password Day, here are some tips that should be considered by users to keep their data protected:

1. Use long and complex passwords. This prevents hackers from using techniques to guess them. However, just using complex passwords may not be enough to protect them from hackers.
2. Many devices are configured with default passwords. Change them immediately.
3. Avoid reusing your passwords on different accounts. Also, constantly check if you have already been the victim of a data leak through senhasegura Hunter. If so, change your passwords immediately.
4. Configure your passwords to be changed frequently. The ideal is at least every 3 months.
5. Do not write down, store in an easily accessible place, or share your passwords with others, thus avoiding unauthorized access.
6. Consider password management solutions, or even privileged access management (PAM), to manage the use of systems and devices.
7. Use Multiple-Factor Authentication (MFA) mechanisms to add a layer of security to your accounts.
8. Set up means of retrieving access, such as including phone numbers or emails.

Passwords are one of the oldest security mechanisms in the computing world and are also one of the main attackvectors by hackers. And in the “new normal” era, with increasing threats resulting from the covid-19 pandemic, it is vital that users be alert and properly protect their digital identities. In this way, we can avoid cyberattacks that can cause considerable damage not only to people, but also to companies. And on this World Password Day, remember: security starts with you!

Written by Priscilla Silva

São Paulo, March 10, 2023 – senhasegura, an award-winning Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution provider that protects corporate IT environments and critical resources from cyber threats, announces a $13 million funding round from Graphene Ventures, a Silicon Valley investor focused on the enterprise software and SaaS sectors.

The investment will help senhasegura strengthen its international presence in the Middle East and North America to increase its global footprint, and accelerate product innovation in its flagship 360º Privilege Platform. As a part of this innovation drive, the company launched, in October 2022, the new MySafe senhasegura and will launch, in January 2023, CIEM products – a personal password vault and a Multi-Cloud Infrastructure Entitlements Management tool, respectively.

Marcus Scharra, co-CEO and co-founder of senhasegura, sees strengthening the company?s international team as a logical first step: “Currently, our partners span 55 plus countries, and we have operations in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. I look forward to further increasing our territorial coverage to reach and serve new customers and keep providing the excellent service we are known for.”

Nabil Borhanu, founding partner at Graphene Ventures, will join the company’s board and is excited about senhasegura’s potential: “The founders and team at senhasegura have done an exceptional job in moving the company forward. We are excited about the partnership and want to help them maximize returns in a way that embraces everyone involved.”

About senhasegura

senhasegura is committed to helping companies become more secure and resilient by stopping privilege abuse from inside and outside the organization. senhasegura’s award-winning 360º Privilege Platform addresses the entire privileged access management lifecycle, including before, during, and after access, and plays a critical role in implementing a robust zero trust architecture. Headquartered in Brazil, senhasegura is a global leader with customers in over 55 countries throughout Latin America, North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The Company’s PAM solution is distributed through an international network of more than 150 value-added, trusted channel partners. For more information, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Written by Priscilla Silva

SÃO PAULO, February 28 of 2023 – The 2022 edition of the CyberSecured awards, promoted by Security Today magazine, a brand of 1105 Media’s Infrastructure Solutions Group, elected senhasegura as the winner in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category in the United States. The awards recognize the product development achievements of manufacturers and vendors whose products or services are considered particularly outstanding in cybersecurity processing.

According to Security Today and CyberSecured eNews Editor-in-Chief Ralph C. Jensen, the award is closely aligned with its readers and demonstrates the magazine’s satisfaction in teaming up with cyber security professionals to showcase new products and advanced technology.

“We are aware of the importance that cybersecurity plays in today’s society and have updated our website to include more case studies and thought leadership articles. We are excited to be a part of this expanding industry and plan to broaden our knowledge base to serve our readers by drawing on the wide experience of professionals and organizations” says Jensen.

For Raphael Silva, Head of Marketing at senhasegura, the importance of the recognition by an American magazine shows the potential of the Brazilian brand in overcoming obstacles and seeking excellence:

?For us at senhasegura it is an honor to be elected in the PAM category, which shows the quality that our product has and is certified by many media outlets, research institutes and our clients. We are in constant evolution and prepared to offer a unique service to North American companies with unmatched quality”, said Silva.

As a result of the award, senhasegura will also be featured on the Security Today magazine’s website as a leader in the security industry, as well as being promoted by other channels of the magazine.

About senhasegura

senhasegura is committed to helping companies become more secure and resilient by stopping privilege abuse from inside and outside the organization. senhasegura?s award-winning 360º Privilege Platform addresses the entire privileged access management lifecycle, including before, during, and after access, and plays a critical role in implementing a robust zero trust architecture. Headquartered in Brazil, senhasegura is a global leader with customers in over 55 countries throughout Latin America, North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The Company?s PAM solution is distributed through an international network of more than 150 value-added, trusted channel partners. For more information, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

About 1105 Media’s Infrastructure Solutions Group

1105 Media’s Infrastructure Solutions Group includes several industry-leading media brands that provide new products and technology solutions for security professionals: Security Today (securitytoday.com), CyberSecured, Campus Security & Life Safety (campuslifesecurity.com) and GovSec. The brands’ print, digital, custom media and research products integrate physical and IT security coverage and provide the smartest, most cost-effective solutions to reach security decision makers.

Cyberattacks are increasingly sophisticated, making traditional digital security tools insufficient to protect organizations from malicious actors.

In 2015, Gartner defined a category of solutions called User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA).
Its big advantage is monitoring suspicious behaviors of human users and devices in corporate networks through algorithms and machine learning, determining if there are threats and issuing alerts to security teams.

In this article, we explain more about this subject, which is extremely important for the security of your company. To facilitate your reading, we divided our text into the following topics:

• What Is User and Entity Behavior Analytics?
• How Does UEBA Work?
• What Are Its Three Pillars?
• What Are the Benefits of UEBA?
• Disadvantages of User and Entity Behavior Analytics
• Best Practices for User and Entity Behavior Analytics
• What Is the Difference Between SIEM and UEBA?
• UEBA X NTA
• What Is UBA and What Is It For?
• What Is the Difference Between UBA and UEBA?
• senhasegura UEBA Solution
• About senhasegura
• Conclusion

Enjoy the read!

What Is User and Entity Behavior Analytics?

User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) is a digital security feature that uses algorithms and machine learning to identify abnormal behaviors in users, routers, servers, and endpoints of a network.

In practice, this technology allows alerting IT administrators about anomalies and automatically disconnecting users with unusual behavior from the network, as it monitors human and machine behavior.

With this, it helps detect people and equipment that could compromise an organization’s system, strengthening its digital security and sovereignty.

How Does UEBA Work?

To ensure the effectiveness of User and Entity Behavior Analytics, it is necessary to implement this feature in the organization’s infrastructure, which can be targeted by malicious attackers.

Moreover, many corporations ask their employees to install this solution on their home routers to avoid risks. This is because the professional may have to access the corporate network using their own router, generating security vulnerabilities.

It is very simple to understand how UEBA works. Let’s imagine an unauthorized user steals an employee’s credentials and accesses the network. This does not make them capable of imitating this employee’s usual behavior.

Therefore, UEBA issues alerts, which reveal suspicious behavior to IT administrators. A UEBA solution has three essential elements. They are analytics, integration, and presentation.

Analytics collects and organizes data about the behavior of human users and entities to determine what should be considered normal. Through this system, profiles are created of how each user behaves when accessing the network. Thus, one can develop models that allow the identification of suspicious behavior.

With the growth and evolution of corporations, it becomes necessary to integrate UEBA into other security systems. Through proper integration, UEBA solutions compare information collected from different sources, which optimizes the system.

Finally, the presentation involves how User and Entity Behavior Analytics responds to abnormal behaviors. It depends on what is defined by the company.

Some UEBA systems are configured to simply create an alert, suggesting an investigation for IT administrators. Others are configured to perform additional actions, such as disconnecting an employee with abnormal behavior.

What Are Its Three Pillars?

According to Gartner, a UEBA solution has three pillars:

• Use cases;
• Data sources; and
• Analytical methods.

Use cases refer to the behavior of human or machine users reported by User and Entity Behavior Analytics, which monitors, identifies, and alerts about anomalies. Unlike systems that perform specialized analysis, UEBA technology needs to be relevant to different use cases.

When we talk about data sources, we refer to repositories of information that feed into UEBA, since User and Entity Behavior Analytics does not collect data directly from IT environments.

Analytical methods are what enable UEBA to identify abnormal behavior. They include threat signatures, statistical models, rules, and machine learning.

What Are the Benefits of UEBA?

Traditional security solutions have proven ineffective at protecting corporations from sophisticated cyberattacks, which has boosted the rise of User and Entity Behavior Analytics, as it allows one to identify even the smallest of unusual behaviors.
Its main benefits include:

Broad Approach to Cyberattacks

In addition to monitoring the behavior of human users, UEBA monitors devices such as endpoints, servers, and routers, which are often targeted by malicious attackers.

Thus, User and Entity Behavior Analytics detects a wide variety of cyberattacks, including insider threats, compromised accounts, brute force attacks, and DDoS.

Operational Efficiency

With the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, UEBA solutions can replace the workforce of IT employees, which represents a benefit for corporations and security teams.

Nevertheless, User and Entity Behavior Analytics does not generate a drastic reduction in IT staff, especially in larger organizations, due to the complexity of security requirements, which require skilled people to configure systems and guide employees.

These professionals may also be responsible for investigating abnormal behaviors if the company decides to investigate them before taking measures.

In addition, IT analysts can develop other projects, working strategically for business growth.

Cost Reduction

With the reduction of the IT team, an organization consequently reduces costs. Also, by detecting abnormal behavior and preventing cyberattacks, companies prevent losses by stopping activities.
They also avoid having their customers’ and employees’ data exposed, which could result in fines due to data protection laws.

Risk Reduction

With professionals connected to corporate networks, including in a home environment, vulnerabilities caused by cyber threats increase gradually, making protection solutions in silos insufficient.

For IT teams, it is impossible to manually monitor all devices in use. Hence the perks of UEBA solutions.
It is worth mentioning that UEBA resources are not limited to ensuring information security. They also enable compliance with security standards for regulated industries, avoiding problems that could lead to lawsuits and fines for companies, as previously mentioned.

Disadvantages of User and Entity Behavior Analytics

The UEBA solutions also have some negative aspects. The first one is its high price, which can make this technology inaccessible to small and medium-sized businesses.

Another disadvantage of User and Entity Behavior Analytics is the slow deployment. Although many vendors claim this system can be deployed in a short time, Gartner customers say that in simple use cases, it can take three to six months, and in complex situations, it can take up to 18 months.

In addition, the view UEBA offers over network behaviors is restricted as its logs are enabled on a small part of a corporation’s network.

It is also important to keep in mind UEBA needs third-party logs to work. Failures in the generation of these logs impact its function.

Best Practices for User and Entity Behavior Analytics

User and Entity Behavior Analytics is designed to identify abnormal behaviors of humans and machines.
However, this solution should not be used in isolation but associated with other monitoring systems, in order to improve the digital security of an organization. Other best practices for companies using UEBA resources are:

• Avoiding false alerts and overloading of generated data, taking advantage of big data resources, and using machine learning and statistical analysis;
• Creating security policies taking into account insider and external threats;
  Ensuring that only information security professionals receive alerts from UEBA; and
• Not underestimating the risks posed by unprivileged user accounts, as hackers can increase privileges to gain access to sensitive systems.

What Is the Difference Between SIEM and UEBA?

Like UEBA, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) features tools that make it possible to improve information security through normal patterns and suspicious behaviors.

The notable difference is that User and Entity Behavior Analytics uses data from human and machine user behavior to define what is normal.

Because SIEM is rule-based, malicious actors can circumvent these guidelines to attack a corporation. Also, SIEM detects threats that happen in real-time, but it is inefficient to prevent sophisticated attacks performed over months or years.

UEBA, on the other hand, is not based on rules, but on risk-scoring techniques and algorithms, which make it possible to detect abnormal behavior over a much longer period.

UEBA X NTA

Like UEBA, Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) solutions are based on machine learning, advanced analytics, and security rules, and monitor user behavior on corporate networks. Moreover, it detects suspicious actions and threats.

However, this technology has other advantages. One is to allow companies to visualize everything that happens on their network, including in the context of a cyberattack. NTA also makes it possible to create network profiles and devices, with easy deployment.

We emphasize these two solutions should be used in a complementary way, since NTA alone does not track local events, nor detect advanced security problems.

What Is UBA and What Is It For?

User Behavior Analytics (UBA) is a technology that allows one to identify unusual or abnormal behaviors, detect intrusions, and minimize their consequences.

Through UBA solutions, one can discover an invasion promoted by cybercriminals or find out if an employee is misusing the data to which they have access.

The focus of User Behavior Analytics is on user analytics, their accounts, and identity, not machine behavior.

What Is the Difference Between UBA and UEBA?

The difference between UBA and UEBA is that, in the first case, we refer to a solution that monitors human users to detect any anomalies in their behavior.

The extra “e” in UEBA extends monitoring to machine entities such as routers, servers, endpoints, and devices in general.

The acronym was updated in 2017 by Gartner to show that in addition to tracking human users, it is essential to identify threats related to devices and applications.

senhasegura UEBA Solution

senhasegura has a UEBA solution embedded in its PAM security platform, which allows one to monitor the behavior of human and machine users automatically.

This technology features a self-learning mechanism to identify and respond to changes in users’ behavior patterns and access profiles.

Some of the main characteristics are:

• Analysis of user session based on behavioral history;
• Identification of accesses and check of suspects by a series of criteria;
• Identification of unusual behavior with abnormality alerts for SIEM/SYSLOG;
• Detailed dashboards with a visual representation of incidents and threats, which allow a security team to act quickly;
• Algorithms are continuously adjusted to user behavior.

Its benefits include:

• Restriction of privilege abuse;
• Fast detection of attacks and compromised accounts;
• Control over the user’s administrative actions;
• Automatic response to suspected credential theft.

About senhasegura

We, from senhasegura, are part of the group of information security companies MT4 Tecnologia, founded in 2001, and we aim to provide digital sovereignty to our customers through the control of privileged actions and data.

With this, we prevent data leaks and theft, as we manage privileged permissions before, during, and after access through machine automation. We work to:

Optimizing the performance of companies, avoiding interruption of operations;
Performing automatic audits on the use of permissions;
Auditing privileged changes to detect abuse of privilege automatically;
Providing advanced solutions with the PAM Security Platform;
Reducing cyber threats; and
Bringing the organizations that hire us into compliance with audit requirements and standards such as PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 27001, and HIPAA.

Conclusion

In this article, you saw that:

• User and Entity Behavior Analytics uses algorithms and machine learning to identify abnormal behaviors in users, whether they are humans or machine entities;
• This solution allows alerting IT administrators about anomalies and automatically disconnecting users with unusual network behavior;
• To ensure the effectiveness of User and Entity Behavior Analytics, it is necessary to install this feature on the organization’s and employees’ devices;
• A UEBA solution has three essential elements. They are analytics, integration, and presentation;
• According to Gartner, a UEBA solution also has three pillars: the use cases, the data sources, and the analytical methods;
• The benefits of UEBA include: a broad approach to cyberattacks, reduction of human labor, cost reduction, and risk reduction;
• Among its negative aspects, the high price and slow deployment stand out;
• The creation of security policies that take into account insider and external threats is among the best practices in the use of UEBA solutions;
• It is also recommended to consider the risks presented by users without privileges;
  SIEM differs from UEBA because it is rule-based and detects only threats that occur in real-time.
  NTA allows organizations to view all the activities that occur on their network, including in the context of a cyberattack, and enables the creation of network profiles and devices, with easy deployment;
• The difference between UBA and UEBA is that the first provides for the monitoring of human users and, in the second case, it is extended to machines.

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This article was developed especially for you, who have questions about the best practices for consolidating Active Directory.

First of all, you need to understand that directory services have the role of organizing important information for companies in a centralized location, ensuring their digital security and good performance.

Thus, the information stored within this database is available for use in various operations. Today, Active Directory leads existing directory services, which also include Open LDAP for Open Source Systems and EDirectory for Novell Systems.

To learn the best practices for consolidating Active Directory and other important information on the subject, keep reading our content.

To facilitate your reading, we divided our text into the following topics:

• What Is Active Directory?
• The Importance of Active Directory
• What is Domain Consolidation?
• How IS Active Directory Structured?
• What Are Active Directory Groups?
• What Are the Types of Active Directory Groups?
• Reasons for Consolidating Active Directory Groups
• Six Best Practices for Consolidating Active Directory
• AD Security Using PAM
• About senhasegura
• Conclusion

Enjoy the read!

What Is Active Directory?

Active Directory (AD) is a database and set of services used in Windows Server to manage permissions and control access to network resources.

Through this technology, one can use the same password to perform several actions, such as opening an email and authenticating a computer. Among its capabilities, we can also highlight the centralization of security features and the ease of searching for the desired item.

Moreover, Active Directory makes it possible to store data, organizing it according to its name and assignments. Keep reading this text; in the next topics, we will show you what the best practices for consolidating Active Directory are.

The Importance of Active Directory

Active Directory provides security and scalability to the IT infrastructure by allowing it to store information about network objects and make such data available to users and administrators.

This Microsoft software is designed to make it easier to find useful information for daily activities, centralizing this data and ensuring more availability and better performance.

Through Active Directory, one can count on different domains associated with different administrators and security policies. As advantages related to Active Directory, we can highlight:

• With accounts stored in the AD database, users have only one username to access network resources.
• It is necessary to log in only once to access the network;
• It is possible to have an unlimited number of domains without changing the way they are managed.
• Centralization: data stored in AD can be accessed from a single environment;
• AD enables all users to access the resources of a network using the same password.

What is Domain Consolidation?

Active Directory works through a structure made up of domains, trees, and forests. Domains are a set of objects that share the database.

Trees refer to sets of domains, which have a common DNS root with a contiguous namespace. Forests, in turn, are collections of trees that are part of the same scheme without integrating a contiguous namespace.
It is possible to group objects into organizational units (OUs) within a domain, which makes it easier to manage them.

How Is Active Directory Structured?

As you saw in the previous topic, Active Directory has three layers formed by domains, trees, and forests.
A domain is a management boundary, which contains users, computers, and other items important to an organization. Different domains make up a tree and several trees make up a forest. In practice, items from a single domain are stored and managed together.

A forest consists of a security boundary. Therefore, the different items stored in this environment should not interact with each other. The exception is when managers establish a relationship of trust between them.

What Are Active Directory Groups?

Active Directory is characterized by classifying users into groups. Through this platform, organizations can manage their computer accounts and provide access to sensitive information.

In practice, each group consists of users who are given access to certain resources through a security identifier (SID) or a global unique identifier (GUID).

The first is used when the goal is to grant access to specific users and the second allows grouping users who need access to the same resources.

In this way, groups are targeted at individual users or global groups.

What Are the Types of Active Directory Groups?

There are two types of Active Directory groups. These are:

Distribution Groups

Distribution groups are used alongside email apps to send messages to sets of users. They do not provide security, so they should not integrate discretionary access control lists.

Security Groups

Security groups allow one to assign access to network resources efficiently.
Through them, access for users is directed to a security group in order to establish how members can work concerning the scope of a domain or forest.

These accesses are automatically assigned to security groups when Active Directory is installed to help administrators determine the role of domain users.

Security groups also allow one to assign permissions to access resources, defining who can access them and the access levels.

In practice, administrators should assign these permissions to security groups and not to individual users. Thus, each account added to a group receives the access provided for that group.

Like distribution groups, security groups can also be used in the form of an email. In this case, when sending a message to the group, all members receive it.

Reasons for Consolidating Active Directory Groups

Consolidating Active Directory groups is important for several reasons. Check some of them:

Groups Are Used to Grant Permissions

Through Active Directory groups, users are entitled to permissions to access file systems, applications, corporate data, and other network resources.

They Can Be Created Based on User Role

In addition to AD groups allowing users to access the resources needed to perform their roles, users with the same responsibilities can be grouped and given the same permissions.

They Improve Information Security

The groups allow strengthening the cybersecurity of an organization, as they make it possible to analyze controls and grant users only the access necessary to perform their tasks. Thus, it is possible to avoid misuse and loss of important information.

Consolidating a Group Makes it Easier to Manage AD

By organizing the directory, eliminating unnecessary groups, and keeping only the important ones, you can locate groups and objects more easily. It also allows you to know the reason for the existence of each group and what permissions are assigned to its users.

Six Best Practices for Consolidating Active Directory

The best practices for consolidating Active Directory are:

• Identifying groups before starting the consolidation process;
• Obtaining supporting information on the purpose of the group;
• Understanding the permissions assigned;
• Deleting unnecessary groups;
• Keeping the directory up to date; and
• Automating group cleaning processes.

Check out how this should be done in more detail:

Identifying Groups Before Starting
Before consolidating a group, it is essential to inquire, gathering all the necessary data, including group name, members, description, managers, and whether it is possible for the owners to modify the group assignment or not.

This measure helps to avoid wasting time and effort related to the need to redo the entire process.

Obtaining Supporting Information on the Purpose of the Group
Often, an IT team creates the group, but does not know what its goals are. Therefore, to obtain this important information, it is necessary to question the person responsible for an industry or line of business, who knows how to provide reliable information about the usability of the group.

Understanding the Permissions Assigned
It is important to understand what permissions are assigned to the groups one wants to consolidate to be able to assign the appropriate permissions to the only consolidated group. In this sense, it may be necessary to group users with similar roles and responsibilities to assign the same permissions to all of them.

Deleting Unnecessary Groups
Before consolidating two or more AD groups, delete unnecessary groups. In this way, you can keep the directory cleaner and easier to use.

Keeping the Directory Up to Date
To keep your directory always clean and up-to-date, it is necessary to avoid the accumulation of group management tasks by classifying them regularly and monitoring their functions and objects so that they do not become outdated.

Automating Group Cleaning Processes
To avoid security threats and ensure good performance for your directory, group cleaning processes should be performed at regular intervals.
Therefore, it is recommended to automate processes using tools that ensure directory cleaning, such as GroupID Self-Service, which speeds up the cleaning process and reduces the chances of human failures.

AD Security Using PAM
PAM is a digital security solution that allows you to control, monitor, audit, and protect privileged access in an IT framework that is extremely useful for eliminating Active Directory-related threats.
Here are some best practices when using a PAM approach to protect AD:

Keep an Inventory of Privileged Accounts
It is essential to ensure the visibility of privileged accounts, so you should keep an inventory of these accounts to know exactly which users can access sensitive information.
This measure also makes it possible to analyze which users still need privileged access and remove their permissions if necessary.
Nevertheless, manually managing multiple privileged accounts can become a problem for large companies. For this reason, we recommend using a tool that allows discovering privileged accounts automatically.

Take the User’s Needs into Account
The fewer access permissions granted to users, the smaller the attack surface and the possibility of privileges being misused.
However, it is important to consider the needs of the user to perform their functions efficiently and have balance when granting access.
In this sense, you can use some techniques: Zero Trust, Principle of Least Privilege, and management of just-in-time privileged access. You can also combine these approaches to protect your AD environment.

Use Multifactor Authentication
Enabling multifactor authentication (MFA) is an alternative to providing an extra layer of security to privileged credentials.
With this mechanism, the user has to give something they know, such as a password, as well as something they have, such as a token, or an identification factor, which takes into account physical aspects, such as biometrics.

Manage Access Controls Efficiently
This practice enables reducing security risks associated with privilege abuses. To adopt it, we recommend using a role-based control method or an attribute-based access control model.

Monitor the Actions of Privileged Users
Tracking the behavior of privileged users is another best practice, as it helps to know what data they access and what changes they make.
With this, you can identify behaviors that can signal malicious actions or account compromise.

Manage Shared Accounts
While not a best practice, many companies use shared accounts to manage their networks or enable third-party services.
Still, without proper management, it is impossible to know, for example, who was responsible for a particular incident.
So, our recommendation is: to review accounts with shared access and analyze if it is really necessary, remove permissions for users who do not need them, and add a second form of authentication for others in order to identify them.

About senhasegura
When it comes to information security, we from senhasegura are a reference. After all, we efficiently perform the job of ensuring the digital sovereignty of the organizations that hire us in more than 50 countries.
In this way, we avoid data theft and track the actions of administrators on networks, servers, databases, and devices in general.
We also provide compliance with audit requirements and the highest standards such as PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 27001, and HIPAA.

Conclusion
In this article, you saw that:
Active Directory is a database and set of services used in Windows Server that enables permission management and control of access to network resources.
This solution makes it possible to store data, organizing it according to its name and assignments;
With Active Directory, you can count on different domains, associated with different administrators and security policies;
Active Directory has three layers formed by domains, trees, and forests;
A domain is a management boundary and a forest is a security boundary.
An Active Directory security group has the role of granting user entitlements and permissions on shared data.
It is important to consolidate Active Directory groups because groups are used to grant permissions, can be created based on the role of users, improve digital security, and facilitate AD management;
Among the best practices for consolidating Active Directory, we can highlight: identifying groups before starting, understanding assigned permissions, and deleting unnecessary groups.

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