Book Image

Mastering Active Directory

By : Dishan Francis
Book Image

Mastering Active Directory

By: Dishan Francis

Overview of this book

Active Directory is a centralized and standardized system that automates networked management of user data, security, and distributed resources and enables interoperation with other directories. If you are aware of Active Directory basics and want to gain expertise in it, this book is perfect for you. We will quickly go through the architecture and fundamentals of Active Directory and then dive deep into the core components, such as forests, domains, sites, trust relationships, OU, objects, attributes, DNS, and replication. We will then move on to AD schemas, global catalogs, LDAP, RODC, RMS, certificate authorities, group policies, and security best practices, which will help you gain a better understanding of objects and components and how they can be used effectively. We will also cover AD Domain Services and Federation Services for Windows Server 2016 and all their new features. Last but not least, you will learn how to manage your identity infrastructure for a hybrid-cloud setup. All this will help you design, plan, deploy, manage operations on, and troubleshoot your enterprise identity infrastructure in a secure, effective manner. Furthermore, I will guide you through automating administrative tasks using PowerShell cmdlets. Toward the end of the book, we will cover best practices and troubleshooting techniques that can be used to improve security and performance in an identity infrastructure.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)

Summary

In this chapter, we looked at the new features and enhancements that come with AD DS 2016. One of the biggest improvements was Microsoft's new approach toward privilege access management. This is not just a feature that can be enabled via AD DS and is just part of the border solution. It helps protect identity infrastructures from adversaries as traditional techniques and technologies are no longer valid with rising threats. We also saw the new types of advanced authentication methods allowed by AD DS. Typical username/password combinations are the weaker option with current infrastructure-security challenges. AD FS 2016 also has additional security enhancements to protect identities in a federated environment. Last but not least, we saw the improvements made to time synchronization to maintain time accuracy across the AD domain.

In the next chapter, we are going...