Which is the most powerful country in the world today?

Folks,

In light of current geopolitical events, I'd like to ask a very simple question, one that the entire world ought to consider, posed above.

To the wise, I needn't say more (, so I won't.)

Thanks,
Sanjay

Iran COULD launch a cyber attack on Microsoft prior to an attack on Israel

Folks,

I hope this finds you doing well. Today's post will be short, because we strive not to comment on any geopolitical events, but out of an abundance of caution, I felt the need to state that which may/should already be obvious to the entire world.

It is a well-known fact that Israel, like many countries in the western world, is a highly digital nation, wherein thousands of its business and government organizations across all sectors e.g. financial, transport, medical, government, defense etc., have and thus operate a digital IT infrastructure.

For the last two decades, for the most part, most of these organizations have been operating on trustworthy, autonomously (independently) operable "on-premises" Microsoft technologies, primarily, Active Directory, Exchange and Office, which enabled and empowered these organizations to operate securely and autonomously without having to rely on anyone else.

However, over the past few years, under the guise of "modernization", Microsoft has been spending billions of dollars to convince/persuade organizations to transition over to its new subscription-based Cloud offerings, Azure and 365 (Office).

As a result, in all likelihood, today thousands of business and government organizations in Israel are now likely using, i.e. relying on, Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure for likely all organizational communications, access, mgmt and security.

To put it in layman terms for the world's populace, today, in all likelihood, communication, productivity and security at thousands of business and government organizations in Israel, today depends on Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365.

In light of this elemental fact, it would appear that a successful attack on Microsoft Corporation's various Cloud Services could have a disruptive impact on the digital foundation of thousands of business and government organizations in Israel.

For instance, hypothetically speaking, a cyber attack that could result in a successful denial-of-service (DoS) attack on just Microsoft 365 services to thousands of Israeli organizations, could impact many mission-critical services across Israel.

In light of the above, if as is being widely reported, were Iran to launch a strike on Israel, it seems possible that it could try to also launch a cyber attack on Microsoft prior to doing so, to try and disrupt essential services/comms within Israel.

It must be mentioned that Microsoft is a successful American Corporation and likely has many cyber defenses in place. However, it must be noted that, unlike script-kiddies or lone-wolfs, when a nation state decides to wage a cyber attack, it has the financial and operational resources of an entire nation at its disposal, and you have to ask yourself whether the defenses of what is basically a for-profit business, may be adequate against a proficient, nation-state cyber adversary.

It must also be stated that there are many Israeli cyber security companies today, including several prominent publicly-held American Corporations, and there are many Israelis working in cyber security within Microsoft, and yet, logically speaking, no cyber security company can protect an organization from the impact of a successful denial-of-service attack launched against Microsoft 365 i.e. I mean, if there is no service, there is no service, period. (All email, access etc. comes to a halt.)

That's all I wanted to say today. This is all public knowledge, but I felt the need to state it out of an abundance of caution.

Sincerely,
Sanjay.

PS: Please note that the perspective shared above is not unique to Israel. Today, thousands of organizations worldwide have basically taken on a mission-critical dependency on Microsoft Cloud Services, having relinquished operational autonomy for a semblance of better security, and a formidable cyberattack on Microsoft could impact all of them.

Introducing a FREE Active Directory Privileged Access Assessment Service

Folks,

At Paramount Defenses, we care deeply about the foundational cyber security of all organizations worldwide, and we remain committed to helping organizations secure their foundational Active Directory deployments.

Towards that objective, it is my privilege to announce that today we are introducing a free service to help all organizations worldwide instantly obtain an accurate assessment of the state of privileged access in their foundational Active Directory.

Without further adieu, I'd like to introduce our 100% FREE Active Directory Privileged Access Assessment Service.

Unique and 100% Free

This service is 100% free, with no strings attached, and no obligation of any sort, and is intended to help organizations determine exactly how many individuals possess privileged access in their foundational Active Directory domains.

The most important and novel aspect of this service is that it is unlike any other in the world, because it is the only service that can deliver such paramount insights based on the accurate determination of Active Directory Effective Permissions.

Accurate and Instant Insights

This unique service is powered by our unique, unrivaled Microsoft-endorsed Gold Finger software tooling, which uniquely enables us to instantly deliver accurate Active Directory privileged access insights to organizations worldwide.

In less than an hour, every organization that wants to know, can now have the following determinations, for free - 

1. How many users can create domain user accounts in Active Directory?
2. How many users can delete domain user accounts in Active Directory?
3. How many users can reset the passwords of domain user accounts in Active Directory?
4. How many users can disable Smartcard use on domain user accounts in Active Directory?
5. How many users can enable disabled domain user accounts in Active Directory?
6. How many users can modify domain security groups memberships in Active Directory?
7. How many users can link group policies to organizational units in Active Directory?
8. How many users can modify security permissions domain-wide in Active Directory?
9. How many users can modify the ACL protecting the AdminSDHolder object in Active Directory?
10. How many users can launch replicate secrets (password hashes) from Active Directory?

These are merely a few of the many Active Directory privileged access insights that we can instantly deliver to any and every organization in the world. We can actually answer just about any question related to effective access in any AD, so if your organization has any specific/niche needs, just let us know, and we'll be happy to help you figure it out in minutes.

Of course, if you want to know the simple stuff like how many users have any kind of permissions in Active Directory, how many users own objects in Active Directory etc., that's 100 times easier to figure out, and we'll do that as well, all for free. 

A Limited Opportunity

At Paramount Defenses, we care deeply about the foundational cyber security of all organizations worldwide, and are happy to be able to offer this unique and valuable service free of cost to help organizations across the world.

Today, thousands of organizations in over a hundred and seventy countries worldwide operate on Active Directory (AD), and that makes it difficult for us to be able to offer this service to every single organization that may wish to avail of it. 

We have thus decided to offer this service to the first one thousand (1000) organizations that request it, from each country, at our discretion, and capacity permitting, we will strive to accommodate all additional requests on a best-efforts basis.

How to Sign-up

Organizations that wish to avail of this unique, free service can do by submitting their request on the service page here.

You can also find a list of helpful frequently asked questions (FAQ) related to the service at the bottom of the page.

Finally, to help you get some perspective, you may want to consider the above, in light of what I've shared here.

That wraps up the little announcement that we wanted to make today. Thank you very much.

Best wishes,
Sanjay

Our Cloud/Modernization Strategy - We Impost ZERO TRUST in the Cloud

Folks,

Hello. I hope this finds you doing well. Let me begin by saying that we are slated to make a small announcement today or tomorrow, and this post is NOT that announcement. That should likely follow in a few hours, or tomorrow.

Our Cloud/Modernization Strategy - We Impose ZERO TRUST in the Cloud

In this post, I wanted to take a few moments to share our Cloud/Modernization strategy.

There appears to be a narrative in the world, likely funded by the world's many Cloud Computing companies, that every organization ought to consider and implement a Cloud/Modernization strategy, or risk getting left technologically behind.

At the core of this narrative appears to be a strong (but inaccurate) message that the Cloud is inherently more trustworthy and cost-effective to use than the traditional computing systems that most of the world's organizations operate on today.

A closer look reveals that such narratives/their core principles seem to emanate from and be delivered to a global audience via guidance from government organizations tasked with promoting "American innovation and industrial competitiveness", published in the form of high-level guidance, which American cloud computing companies seize the opportunity to quote.

It also seems that such narratives/initiatives seem to provide certain vendors of operating systems and hosting providers (, mostly American Corporations,) a golden opportunity to additionally have their entire global organizational customer base now also pay them, on a recurring basis, for a host of new computing and cyber security services built, marketed and labelled as the 'Cloud.'

To further worsen the situation, it appears that some of these vendors seem to invest billions of dollars in sophisticated marketing strategies, to not only get some of these initiatives to become part of American Government policy, but also to convince/persuade the "C-Suite" at their global organizational customer base, to transition assets over to their Cloud.

Little do these hapless organizational customers from across the world seem to realize that whilst embracing these new services marketed as the Cloud may sound rosy and secure, in reality, it requires (involves) them to basically relinquish* operational control (autonomy) and privacy, and take on an eternal dependency on an external third-party.

* The moment an organization transitions its primary identities into the Cloud is the moment it loses its operational autonomy.

The world's organizations and their shareholders may want to contrast this with the undeniable fact that the alternative, i.e. operating on traditional computing systems upon which the world has been successfully operating for years now, does NOT require organizations to relinquish their operational autonomy, privacy or security, i.e. give up their sovereignty.

It appears that this paramount fact, one that directly impacts the security, autonomy and sovereignty of every organization, and in the case of governments, also impacts national sovereignty and national security, is astonishingly overlooked!

The Cloud is a No-Starter for Us

It likely cannot be stated any simpler than someone already has - "The Cloud is just someone else's computer."

The world ought to understand, in no uncertain terms, that the moment you put your assets onto someone else's computer, they are no longer, either private OR solely yours. They can be accessed by, copied, modified and destroyed by ANYONE who has ADMINISTRATIVE or sufficient access to that computer, or anyone who could gain UNAUTHORIZED access to it, including 1000s of the Cloud provider's personnel (, whose identities/computers too could be compromised and misused.) 

Further, because these Cloud providers are starting to be used by thousands of organizations, they themselves are now MASSIVE targets for highly proficient, and often state-funded adversaries, and their compromise could easily cascade.

Finally, when you use an Identity Provider (IDP), you must understand that that IDP now knows exactly who you are, where you are, what you are logging on to, and what you are accessing. In other words, you have no privacy left. None.

For starters, for that reason to begin with, the Cloud is a no-starter for us.

Concluding Thoughts

My time is very valuable so I will not spend more time on this. Time permitting, I may pen another blog post in the future with sufficient (concrete) technical details, but for now, this is all I wish to say, and have time to say regarding the Cloud. 

Let me be very clear - we are perfectly capable of offering the most technologically advanced services in the Cloud as well, but since it is conceptually a no-starter for us, we do not invest time or resources to build and offer Cloud based services.

In short, at Paramount Defenses, we literally impose zero trust in the Cloud, and since we know how to operate a secure IT environment, we do NOT rely on anyone i.e. any Cloud provider to operate our internal organizational IT infrastructure.

As a result, we fully retain our operational autonomy, organizational privacy and cyber security. 

That's all I have to say about it. As a well-wisher, I encourage the entire world to consider the perspective shared above.

Thanks,
Sanjay

The World's Top Cyber Security Companies, including Microsoft (MSFT), Crowdstrike (CRWD), ZScaler (ZS), CyberArk (CYBR) etc. ALL Agree on ONE Fact

Folks,

There is 1 (ONE) simple paramount fact that impacts cyber security worldwide today that virtually ALL of the world's top cyber security companies, including Microsoft (MSFT), CrowdStrike (CRWD), Dell (DELL), Splunk (SPLK), ZScaler (ZS), CyberArk (CYBR) etc. etc. all agree on, and I quote -

"Microsoft Windows Server Active Directory is the foundation of an IT Infrastructure"

- Source: Splunk  Backup-Source (SPLK, acquired by Cisco  Market Cap: $28 Billion)

"Microsoft Active Directory is at the core of your business"

- Source: DellEMC (DELL,  Market Cap: $ 99 Billion)

"Active Directory and Entra ID are the lifeblood of your business"

- Source: Quest (Quest Software,  Valuation: ~ $ 5 Billion)

"When AD fails, either from ransomware, cyberattacks or catastrophes, the IT environment grinds to a halt"

- Source: Quest (Quest Software,  Valuation: ~ $ 5 Billion)

"Microsoft Active Directory is a collection of services that help you manage users and devices on a network."

- Source: Amazon AWS  (AMZN,  Market Cap: $ 2 Trillion.)

"Start with Active Directory, go everywhere"

- Source: Okta  (OKTA,  Market Cap: $ 15 Billion.)

"Configure GlobalProtect to use Active Directory Authentication profile"

- Source: Palo Alto Networks  (PANW,  Market Cap: $ 106 Billion.)

"A secure Active Directory environment can mitigate most attacks."

- Source: CrowdStrike  (CRWD,  Market Cap: $ 90 Billion.)

"At the heart of every network there are the Domain Controllers and the Active Directory instances that run on them."

- Source: CyberArk  (CYBR,  Market Cap: $ 7 Billion)

"Microsoft Active Directory is used extensively across global enterprises. Even with the migration to Azure Active Directory, companies continue to utilise Active Directory in a Hybrid environment where workstations may be joined solely to AD, or both AD joined and WorkPlace joined to AAD."

- Source: ZScaler  (ZS,  Market Cap: $ 30 Billion)

"Manually maintaining Google identities for each employee can add unnecessary management overhead when all employees already have an account in Active Directory. By federating user identities between Google Cloud and your existing identity management system, you can automate the maintenance of Google identities and tie their lifecycle to existing users in Active Directory."

- Source: Google  (GOOG,  Market Cap: $ 2 Trillion)

"Active Directory provides mission-critical authentication, authorization and configuration capabilities to manage users, computers, servers and applications throughout an organization’s IT infrastructure...

…[it] is critical to secure an organization’s systems and applications."

- Source: Microsoft  (MSFT,  Market Cap: $ 3 Trillion)

"From the White House to the entire U.S. Government, and from the $3T Microsoft (MSFT) to the global Fortune 1000, at the very foundation of cyber security of 85% of all organizations worldwide lies a single technology - Active Directory."

- Source: Paramount Defenses (Privately held)

A  $ 20 Trillion  Fact

Here are just a few corporations on the Standard & Poors 500 (S&P 500) at whose very foundation lies Active Directory   -

Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), American Airlines (AAL), American Express (AXP), AmerisourceBergen (ABC), AT&T (T),  Baker Hughes (BKR), Bank of America (BAC), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) BlackRock (BLK), Capital One Financial (COF), Caterpillar (CAT), CBRE Group (CBRE), Cisco (CSCO), Citibank (C), Clorox (CLX), Coca-Cola Company (KO), Chevron (CVX), Cisco (CSCO), Comcast (CMCSA), CVS Health (CVS), Costco (COST), Delta Airlines (DAL), Dow Inc (DOW), Dupont de Nemours (DD), Equifax (EFX), Exxon Mobil (XOM), Facebook (FB), Ford Motor (F), Fortinet (FTNT), Fox Corporation (FOX), Gartner (IT), General Electric (GE), General Motors (GM), Gilead Sciences (GILD), Goldman Sachs (GS), Google (GOOG), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Hilton Worldwide (HLT), Humana (HUM), IBM (IBM), Intel (INTC), JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Johnson and Johnson (JNJ), Kellogg Co (K), Kroger Co (KR), Lockheed Martin (LMT), Mastercard (MA), McDonalds (MCD), Merck (MRK), MetLife (MET), Microsoft (MSFT), Morgan Stanley (MS), Nasdaq (NASD), Netflix (NFLX), NewsCorp (NWS), Nike (NIKE), Northrop Grumman (NOC), Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH), Nvidia (NVDA), Occidental Petroleum (OXY), Okta (OKTA) Oracle Corp (ORCL), PayPal (PYPL), PepsiCo Inc (PEP), Phillip Morris International (PM), Procter and Gamble (PG), Qualcomm (QCOM), Quest Diagnostics (DGX), Raytheon (RTX), Robert Half International (RHI), Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCL), S&P Global (SPG), Salesforce.com (CRM), Schlumberger (SLB), Southwest Airlines (LUV), Sysco Corp (SYY), Target Corp (TGT), Tesla (TSLA), Tyson Foods (TSN), Twitter (TWTR) United Airlines (UAL), UPS (UPS), Verizon (VZ), Walmart (WMT), Walt Disney (DIS), Wells Fargo (WFC), Yum! Brands (YUM) etc. etc.

This Sounds Very Important

If $ 20+ Trillion are riding on Active Directory today, one would have to assume that the security of these foundational Active Directory deployments ought to be one of the highest organizational cyber security priorities worldwide. It is.

In fact, it is paramount. However, there's just one small Trillion $ problem...




Microsoft's #1 Recommendation

As evidenced in the quote above, Microsoft has always highly and sufficiently recommended that every organization operating on Active Directory consider it mission-critical to business and adequately secure and defend it at all times.

In fact, Microsoft recommends that the 1st and most important (paramount) cyber security measure that organizations take to secure (defend) Active Directory is to correctly identify and reduce users who have privileged access in Active Directory:

 "Privileged accounts like administrators of Active Directory have direct or indirect access to most or all assets

in an IT organization, making a compromise of these accounts a significant business risk."

Source

"Cyber-attackers focus on privileged access in Active Directory 

to rapidly gain access to all of an organizations data."

Source

"Securing privileged access is (thus) a critical first step
to establishing security for business in a modern organization."

Source

"Because it can be difficult or even impossible to properly secure every aspect of an organization's IT infrastructure,
you should focus efforts first on the accounts whose privilege create the greatest risk,
which are privileged accounts and groups in Active Directory."

Source

"Implement least privilege. Limit the count of administrators
or members of privileged groups in Active Directory."

Source 1 , Source 2

"Review administrative privileges each quarter to determine which personnel
still have a legitimate business need for administrative access (in Active Directory)"

Source

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of detection"

Source

There's Just A Small Trillion $ Problem

Shockingly, the means to implement Microsoft's number #1 recommendation to thousands of its organizational customers, i.e. the means to correctly (accurately) identify who has what privileged access in/across Active Directory just don't exist*.

That's right. The capability that organizations require to correctly identify who has what privileged access in their Active Directory, so they can limit the number of privileged users and review this number every quarter, doesn't exist* today.

As a result, thousands of organizations worldwide do not even have the means to be able to correctly identify, control, minimize or review exactly who has the "Keys to the Kingdom" in their foundational Active Directory deployments.



Here's evidence, from none other than Microsoft  (Source) -

"In assessing Active Directory installations, we (Microsoft) invariably find excessive numbers of accounts that have been granted rights and permissions far beyond those required to perform day-to-day work. Mid-sized directories may have dozens of accounts in the most highly privileged groups, while large installations may have hundreds or even thousands."

Simply stated, it means that in most large organizations, today there very likely are hundreds or even thousands of users who possess sufficient privileged access so as to be able to control, compromise or blow up the entire organization!

To put this context, consider the fact that almost all major recent cyber security breaches including JP Morgan, Sony Hack, Target, Snowden, OPM Breach, Anthem, Avast, the U.N. breach, SolarWinds Breach, Colonial Pipeline Hack, Microsoft Hack, Okta Hack etc. ALL involved the compromise and misuse of just ONE Active Directory Privileged User account!

(Recently, it cost shipping giant Maersk a staggering $ 250 Million to recover from a breach involving its Active Directory.)



In short, as it concerns having visibility into exactly who has the all-powerful "Keys to the Kingdom" in an organization, today most organizations are operating in the proverbial dark, and neither their IT groups nor their C-Suite have a clue.

(In fairness to all IT admins, IT managers and CISOs at thousands of organizations, this is a massive problem and a very sophisticated technical subject, so they alone should not be blamed for not sufficiently understanding its vast complexity.)

Unfortunately, with the advent of freely available hacking tools be specifically designed to identify and exploit exactly such excessive access related vulnerabilities in Active Directory, urgently addressing this problem has become paramount.


This should be a serious cause of concern for all stakeholders, including their employees, customers and shareholders.





*All of One

Note the use of  * when referring to the non-existence of the paramount capability that organizations require to adequately defend Active Directory i.e. the ability to correctly (accurately) identify who has what privileged access in Active Directory.

It so happens that there's all of ONE company on planet Earth that possesses this capability today, and its patented, Microsoft-endorsed capability can uniquely enable and empower every organization operating on Active Directory to be able to correctly, instantly and automatically identify exactly who has what privileged access in Active Directory.

Actually, there's a little more to it than "it so happens." Eighteen years ago, Microsoft's top cyber security expert on Active Directory Security established this company and for the last eighteen years, it has been laser-focused on solving just this one single $ 28 Trillion problem for the world, (oh, and $ 28 Trillion only accounts for companies in the United States.)

You've likely never heard of this company, but over the last decade, from the United States Treasury to the United States Department of Defense, many of the world's most important and valuable government and business organizations have used and depended on its solutions to correctly identify and minimize privileged access in their Active Directory.

Today, not a single cyber security or IT company on Earth, let alone those listed on the Nasdaq, can compete with it.

Today this company can uniquely enable and empower the entire world to instantly, effortlessly, and most importantly, accurately identify, minimize and lock-down all privileged access, i.e. the "Keys to the Kingdom", in foundational Active Directory deployments worldwide, thereby helping thousands of organizations worldwide trustworthily attain and maintain Least Privileged Access (LPA), which is not only a cyber security necessity but also a cardinal tenet of Zero Trust.

That ONE company is Paramount Defenses, and perhaps the simplest introduction to it can be found here.


We will be making a small announcement tomorrow or day after, that is likely to impact a Trillion+ $.

That's all for now.

Best wishes,
Sanjay Tandon

Formerly
Program Manager,
Active Directory Security,
Microsoft Corporation.


PS: Please Understand -

 

It is a LITTLE difficult to be humble when your work single-handedly impacts Trillions of $ worldwide, and you're trying to help thousands of organizations understand why they remain substantially vulnerable.

This isn't about petty stuff like money i.e. it isn't about a Million or a Billion or a 100B or a T. It's about doing what's right.

Four years ago, I personally demonstrated how hackers could unleash ransomware onto 1000s of organizational computers using Active Directory. For almost ten years now, I have also been personally warning about the use of Active Directory Privilege Escalation as a top attack vector, and sure enough, in almost every major breach, including the SolarWinds Breach, the Colonial Pipeline Hack and recently the Okta and Microsoft breaches, the defining/cardinal step employed by the perpetrators to gain unrestricted privilege was Active Directory Privilege Escalation. I have also been extensively warning about the use of DCSync, and sure enough, as observed and reported by Microsoft, it is DCSync that LAPSUS$ (DEV-0537) employed to obtain unrestricted access and inflict damage. Need I say more?

It remains my professional opinion as former Microsoft Program Manager for Active Directory Security that attaining and maintaining LPA in Active Directory is the single-most important and effective measure that organizations can take to substantially improve their cyber security posture, and technically, we can help the entire world do so, oh and we can technically do so in less than one day. (To appreciate that, consider that even Microsoft couldn't do so in one decade.)

It is also imperative that the world and Microsoft realize that Microsoft making the entire world signup for and rely on its (now twice hacked) Azure (, renamed to Entra after two hacks) Cloud is NOT the answer to solving such problems, because, simply put, the day that an organization transitions over its primary identity to a third-party Identity Provider (IDP) is the day that it relinquishes its operational autonomy, organizational privacy and dignity to a third-party, forever.

Cyber security isn't that difficult, but it does require basic common-sense. If you don't even know how many users have the "Keys to your Kingdom" how can you even begin to protect your organization? This isn't rocket science, its common sense.