Audit Checklist For Active Directory

Active Directory is an integral component of Microsoft’s Windows ecosystem for identity management, authentication, authorization and security – but securing it may present unique challenges.

One incorrect AD setting change can wreak havoc with your cybersecurity posture, while membership of privileged groups like Domain Admins allows users to exert considerable control.

1. Review the Audit Policy
An Active Directory audit policy defines which events should be recorded and how they should be logged, while also making sure your domain controllers produce logs suitable for compliance monitoring or forensic investigations.

Revamping your audit policy regularly is crucial to making sure that the appropriate settings are used to record events of importance. To simplify this process, use an automated tool which enables you to monitor and analyze Active Directory audit logs.

One of the key auditing best practices involves regularly auditing membership of groups like Domain Admins. This helps minimize risk that an errant administrator gains access to critical network services and systems; additionally, audits should look out for issues like circular nesting, token bloat, etc.

2. Review the Audit Policy Settings
Audit policy settings ensure your domain controllers are logging events that meet compliance and security requirements, so as to meet compliance. This requires understanding your network architecture, Active Directory OU design and security groups; in addition to how best to obtain event data.

Utilizing native Active Directory audit methods (Windows Event Viewer) can be time consuming and cumbersome due to event data being replaced frequently, requiring expertise to filter and interpret events correctly.

Utilizing Active Directory audit and Privileged Access Management (PAM) best practices are integral parts of protecting your network against hackers who exploit unpatched vulnerabilities on AD servers. Learn how Ekran System can assist in safeguarding user access rights, monitoring activity and detecting suspicious behaviour within your AD environment.

3. Review the Audit Logs
As part of your best practices, it is wise to regularly review and monitor the results of your audit policy. Doing this can help detect and address any suspicious activities which stray outside your normal security baseline more quickly.

Account lockouts can occur due to multiple failed login attempts or expired passwords. A timely response to such events is critical in protecting data loss and stopping cyberattacks in their tracks.

Note that native event logs are dispersed and provide incomplete data, such as when Group Policies were modified but without details on what specific settings were altered. With an Active Directory auditing solution such as Netwrix AD auditing solution providing visibility into changes made to user accounts, objects, permissions on domain controllers allowing faster response times when incidents arise.

4. Review the Audit Log Format
Analyzing audit logs requires looking at what kinds of data is being logged. Look out for log entries which document file system-based capability settings like cap_fi or cap_fver fields as they could indicate inheritance of file system capabilities.

Additionally, it’s crucial that the audit log format provides visibility into who is accessing what. This is particularly relevant for organizations using hybrid IT environments; therefore, the solution you select should consume both on-premises and cloud-based Active Directory audit logs before normalizing them into one stream and giving an overall unified view of your IT ecosystem.

By following PAM best practices and conducting an AD audit, your organization’s IT environment can remain safe from compromises. Want to know more? Request a demo of Ekran System today.

5. Review the Audit Log Dates
An Active Directory audit should track all changes made to key objects. Unauthorized or undetected modifications of object attributes increase the risk of hackers or other threats successfully exploiting your AD environment.

Your auditing tool of choice must provide real-time alerts and automated insider threat detection to allow timely detection and containment of threats as they emerge, helping your business avoid data breaches, downtime, and costly compliance penalties.

An effective third-party audit solution should ingest on-premises and cloud IT environments’ audit events, normalize them, and combine them into one audit stream for easy review. In addition, pre-formatted reports for many standards such as SOX, GLBA, GDPR, HIPAA and PCI-DSS will make audits faster and simpler to manage.