Active Directory Holds the Keys to Your Kingdom – But Are You Treating It That Way?
Developing a comprehensive cyber resilience strategy is a complex, multifaceted exercise that cannot afford to overlook a point of failure capable of bringing an organisation to a standstill. As the single source of truth for identities and permissions for systems, services and people, Microsoft Active Directory (AD) is the backbone of an organisation’s IT infrastructure. This makes it an extremely attractive attack vector. However, many organisations are still treating AD as an indiscriminate feature.
Whether malicious or accidental, an AD outage could bring your entire business to a halt. Proactive protection is crucial – which is why we invite you to join your peers for a roundtable to discuss the challenges of ensuring that Active Directory (AD) is treated as a mission-critical application.
Key Points of Discussion
- How has cloud-based digital transformation complicated the AD environment?
- Why are malicious outsiders targeting AD, and what can you do to stop them?
- Where can you apply the best protections to maintain resilience of your AD infrastructure?
- What benefits will the business gain by prioritising AD as a business-critical application?
Moderator: Paul Cooper, Former Director Digital Health, Victorian Department of Health & Human Services
Host: Maureen Eldridge, Account Director – Federal Government, Quest & One Identity
Date and Time: Tuesday, 22nd of August, 12pm till 2pm | Invitation List | 10-15 Chiefs, Assistant Secretaries, Directors and Program managers in Security, Cyber, Infrastructure, Cloud, Architecture, and Risk portfolios.
Details: Reservations are strictly limited and reserved for Public Service Employees. Please see below for further details. All food and beverage is complimentary. Chatham House Rule apply.
About Active Directory
With the Australian government’s push to mandate Essential Eight compliance for all non-corporate government departments, effective management of administrative accounts —considered to be the ‘keys to the kingdom’ — has become more important than ever.
Active Directory (AD) and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) are the almost universal repositories of organisations’ identity information — providing single sign-on and a single source of authorisation.
As the single source of truth for identities and permissions for systems, services and people, AD is the backbone of an organisation’s IT infrastructure. This makes it an extremely attractive attack vector. However, many organisations are still treating AD as an indiscriminate feature, rather than a mission-critical application.
Rapid and regular data changes, complex data structures, and endlessly changing organisational structures make it extremely difficult to ensure AD remains continuously available and secure. Cybercriminals are well aware of this, frequently targeting AD servers or harvesting outdated credentials to gain access to critical business systems.
Whether malicious or accidental, an AD outage could bring your entire business to a halt. In the event of an AD security breach or a targeted attack, the extent of an organisation’s suffering is determined by its ability to respond and recover; in other words, its cyber resilience. If your cyber resilience strategy does not include AD resilience, you could end up explaining why to senior management during the heat of a crisis response.