Book Image

Mastering Active Directory. - Second Edition

By : Dishan Francis
Book Image

Mastering Active Directory. - Second Edition

By: Dishan Francis

Overview of this book

Active Directory (AD) is a centralized and standardized system that automates networked management of user data, security, and distributed resources and enables inter-operation with other directories. This book will first help you brush up on the AD architecture and fundamentals, before guiding you through core components, such as sites, trust relationships, objects, and attributes. You will then explore AD schemas, LDAP, RMS, and security best practices to understand objects and components and how they can be used effectively. Next, the book will provide extensive coverage of AD Domain Services and Federation Services for Windows Server 2016, and help you explore their new features. Furthermore, you will learn to manage your identity infrastructure for a hybrid cloud setup. All this will help you design, plan, deploy, manage operations, and troubleshoot your enterprise identity infrastructure in a secure and effective manner. You’ll later discover Azure AD Module, and learn to automate administrative tasks using PowerShell cmdlets. All along, this updated second edition will cover content based on the latest version of Active Directory, PowerShell 5.1 and LDAP. By the end of this book, you’ll be well versed with best practices and troubleshooting techniques for improving security and performance in identity infrastructures.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Active Directory Planning, Design, and Installation
8
Section 2: Active Directory Administration
13
Section 3: Active Directory Service Management
18
Section 4: Best Practices and Troubleshooting

Summary

Continuous monitoring and auditing is a must for an identity infrastructure to identify potential security threats and maintain a healthy environment. There are a lot of tools and methods out there to do this, but the success of these solutions depends on the accuracy of detection, the way it presents data, and how it helps in identifying the root cause.

In this chapter, we started by looking at Windows' in-built tools and methods t can be used to monitor and audit AD environments. First, we started with GUI tools and then moved to PowerShell-based auditing. Then we looked at Microsoft ATA and how it can help to identify security threats in the infrastructure that cannot be detected using traditional tools and methods. Later, we looked at the Microsoft Cloud-based advanced monitoring and log analytics solution, Azure Monitor. Using a demonstration, I also explained...