Active Directory (AD) underpins identity and access management in up to 90% of enterprise IT environments, making it a prime ransomware target. AD environments are complex and evolving with hybrid deployments and automation, which introduce vulnerabilities. Default permissive settings, legacy protocols, weak delegation, excessive permissions, and limited native tooling enable privilege escalation and lateral movement. Native AD lacks real-time detection and centralized hybrid management, creating blind spots where single compromised credentials or unauthorized group policy changes can yield full domain compromise. Proactive, intelligence-led defenses, including hardening, visibility, automation, and recovery readiness, are required to mitigate modern ransomware and identity threats.
It's not a static environment - it's complex and constantly evolving through new hybrid deployments and automation, which can introduce vulnerabilities. Many organisations are still managing AD the way they did five years ago, without the visibility, automation, or recovery readiness required to counter today's sophisticated identity threats. Securing AD is no longer a box-ticking exercise.
AD is susceptible to compromise due to permissive default settings, complex interdependencies, support for legacy protocols, and limited native security tooling. Even a newly deployed AD forest is often insecure by default, containing misconfigurations and dangerous permission combinations that attackers readily exploit AD's built-in administrator account lacks protection against delegation attacks, making it a common starting point for privilege escalation.
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