Secure Active Directory
Practical guidance for understanding, auditing, and hardening Active Directory environments.
Technical articles, defensive guidance, PowerShell examples, and security resources for administrators, consultants, and defenders responsible for protecting Active Directory.
Active Directory remains a critical security boundary.
When Active Directory is misconfigured, attackers can often move quickly from a single compromised account to broad domain control.
Secure Active Directory focuses on practical, technically accurate guidance for identifying weaknesses, understanding attack paths, and improving defensive posture.
Featured Guides
Start with the core areas of Active Directory security.
Active Directory Hardening Guide
A practical guide to reducing common Active Directory risks, improving administrative controls, and strengthening identity security.
Kerberos Security Guide
Understand how Kerberos works, where it is commonly abused, and how to reduce exposure to attacks such as Kerberoasting and AS-REP Roasting.
AD CS Security Guide
Learn how certificate services can introduce privilege escalation paths, how misconfigurations occur, and how to assess certificate template risk.
Active Directory Security Checklist
A focused checklist for reviewing identity hygiene, privileged access, authentication policy, delegation, domain controllers, and common exposure points.
Browse Topics
Explore practical Active Directory security topics.
Active Directory Security
Core concepts, security models, common misconfigurations, and practical defensive guidance.
Kerberos
Authentication behavior, delegation, ticket abuse, roasting attacks, and hardening recommendations.
PKI / AD CS
Certificate templates, enrollment permissions, ESC paths, certificate mapping, and AD CS defensive practices.
PowerShell
Practical scripts and examples for auditing users, groups, computers, delegation, and security posture.
Attack Techniques
Defender-focused explanations of common AD attack techniques, how they work, and how to detect or prevent them.
Hardening
Configuration guidance, security baselines, administrative controls, and operational practices for reducing AD risk.
Resources
Checklists, references, and practical security resources.
Practical resources for defenders, including checklists, cheat sheets, reference pages, and curated Microsoft documentation.
View ResourcesAbout This Project
A hobby project built for defenders.
Secure Active Directory exists to help people better understand and secure Active Directory. The goal is to publish useful and technically grounded content that informs and educates users.