World, Hello Again

Folks,

Hello. I hope this finds you doing well. It has been almost two years since we last penned a post here on our blog.

The silence was intentional, and now it is TIME to break our silence. We have been hard at work, quietly, working on two new products, GG and TB (, one of which targets the Cloud), and both of which, like GF (Gold Finger) could* easily substantially impact the foundational cyber security of thousands of organizations worldwide, including Microsoft's.

*If the need were to arise, as and when it does, we will unveil them.

For now though, our focus continues to be on Gold Finger, which remains unrivaled and indispensable for Active Directory Security. Today, amongst many organizations worldwide, Gold Finger helps secure and defend $100 Billion+ companies.

Speaking of which, today we announced the availability of Gold Finger Version 8.0 with support for Windows 11.

Active Directory remains Foundational

Microsoft Active Directory is a mature, time-tested and provably trustworthy technology that enables and empowers organizations to autonomously operate the lifeline of their business, their IT infrastructures. Those who claim that Active Directory is not secure, may not know enough about Active Directory security.

Active Directory is one of the most highly securable technologies in the world today, and its powerful security model enables organizations that possess the right capabilities to be able to easily attain and maintain least privileged access (LPA) and independently operate highly resilient foundational IT infrastructures.

In days to come, we will help the world understand how to easily attain and maintain LPA in Active Directory.

Helping Organizations Retain their Operational Autonomy, Privacy and Dignity

Today, we also reiterated our commitment to helping organizations worldwide securely operate Active Directory.

Thousands of organizations worldwide are realizing for themselves what we have been saying for years i.e. the day they relinquish control of their primary identities (such as to an IDP in the Cloud) is the day they will have relinquished their operational autonomy and privacy, forever, and taken on an eternal dependency on a third-party. 

Of course, should such an IDP be compromised, their organization could also instantly be at risk of compromise.

In contrast, organizations that retain control over their primary identities i.e. organizations whose primary identities reside in their Active Directory, will continue to enjoy operational autonomy, safeguard their privacy and preserve their dignity.

In days to come, we will also help organizations worldwide understand how to easily secure Active Directory.

That's all for now. There's a lot we have to share, and in coming days, you can expect us do so.

Best wishes,
Sanjay 

Active Directory - The World's Most TRUSTWORTHY Foundational Technology

Folks,

Today I'd like to share a few thoughts with you on one the most important topics in all of organizational security - i.e. which FOUNDATIONAL technology should organizations be operating upon today? I will make the case of Active Directory (🔺).

Microsoft Active Directory - The World's Most Trustworthy Foundational Technology

For the last twenty years, the entire world has successfully operated on a highly trustworthy foundation - Active Directory.

Indeed, from the entire United States Government to virtually the entire global Fortune 1000, today over twenty thousand government and business organizations in over one hundred and ninety countries operate on Microsoft Active Directory.

Active Directory has stood the test of time and is the most trustworthy foundation that organizations can operate on today.

While some may view Active Directory as merely an Identity Provider (IDP), in reality, it is substantially more than that. 

Active Directory is -

1. An enterprise-grade multi-mastered directory service that offers unrivaled availability, fault-tolerance and resilience. 


2. A Kerberos realm that enables enterprise-wide trustworthy network authentication and seamless single sign-on.


3. The Foundation of Authentication, Authorization and Auditing (AAA) that empowers organizations to precisely control network user authentication, secure authorization to IT resources and auditing for all vital AA actions.


4. The Heart of Identity and Access Management (IAM) considering that the entirety of an organization's identities (and their credentials) and security groups reside in and are secured and managed in Active Directory.   


5. The Heart of Privileged Access and Enabler of Least Privileged Access (LPA) considering that the most powerful privileged accounts are stored, secured and managed in it -AND- that privileged access for all salient aspects of identity and access management can be precisely provisioned/delegated based on the principle of least privilege.    


6. The Control Center for Centralized Host and Security Management that via Group Policy enables organizations to easily, efficiently and comprehensively control and manage all endpoints -AND- their security.


7. The Foundation for Zero Trust considering that Zero Trust is fundamentally about ensuring that all access is provisioned based on the principle of least privilege (i.e. LPA), and in environments powered by Active Directory, access for all aspects of identity and access management is provisioned, controlled and audited in Active Directory.

In addition, Active Directory lets organizations easily enable seamless single sign-on to external systems via federation, and it can be synchronized with secondary IDPs like Microsoft Azure to facilitate SSO access to Cloud based services.

Finally, contrary to popular belief, Active Directory can* in fact be easily, efficiently and reliably operated and secured. 

However, the most important and overlooked strength of Active Directory is that enables and empowers organizations to be able to autonomously and independently operate their IT infrastructures, without any eternal external dependencies, without having to expose the entire organization to the Internet, and without having to incur a dime of additional cost.

Conclusion

In essence, today, an organization's Active Directory deployment is the very foundation of its cyber security, the heart of privileged access and the bedrock of organizational security, which makes it an extremely valuable organizational asset.

Above all, it lets organizations independently operate, highly trustworthy, self-reliant and fixed-cost IT infrastructures, in contrast to having to relinquish all control and transition to relatively new, constantly costing, third-party operated services.

In conclusion, when it comes to cyber security, technical maturity, operational excellence and autonomous operation, today, no technology can rival the trustworthiness, resilience and autonomy that Active Directory offers organizations.

Best wishes,
Sanjay Tandon

Formerly
Program Manager
Active Directory Security
Microsoft Corporation