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"
"Microsoft Active Directory is at the core of your business"
"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"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Cyber-attackers focus on privileged access in Active Directory
to rapidly gain access to all of an organizations data."
"Securing privileged access is (thus) a critical first step
to establishing security for business in a modern organization."
"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."
"Implement least privilege. Limit the count of administrators
or members of privileged groups in Active Directory."
"Review administrative privileges each quarter to determine which personnel
still have a legitimate business need for administrative access (in Active Directory)"
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of detection"
to establishing security for business in a modern organization."
"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."
"Implement least privilege. Limit the count of administrators
or members of privileged groups in Active Directory."
"Review administrative privileges each quarter to determine which personnel
still have a legitimate business need for administrative access (in Active Directory)"
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of detection"
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 -
My sincerest apologies, but 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?
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.
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