The Reality of Active Directory Delegation Management
When was the last time your organization thoroughly reviewed Active Directory delegations? For most organizations, the honest answer is “never” or “we’re not sure.” This reality isn’t surprising – Active Directory has been the backbone of enterprise identity management for over two decades, quietly accumulating layers of permissions and access rights that few fully understand.
Critical Questions About Your AD Environment
Take a moment to consider these questions about your Active Directory:
- Do you know who currently has privileged access to your domain controllers?
- Can you list all the custom delegations made in your AD environment over the past year?
- How many service accounts have delegated permissions, and are they all still needed?
- If a security audit happened tomorrow, could you explain every delegation in your environment?
- When consultants or contractors were given temporary access, was it ever fully revoked?
- During past emergencies, were temporary privilege escalations properly reversed?
- How many former IT staff members’ delegation decisions are still active in your environment?
- Could you identify unauthorized delegation changes within 24 hours?
If you’re struggling to answer these questions with confidence, you’re not alone. This is the reality most organizations face today.
Understanding the Challenge
Think of your Active Directory as a living record of your organization’s history. Each administrative change, each new hire in IT, each consultant engagement, and each departmental reorganization has left its mark. Over the years, temporary access becomes permanent, emergency changes during incidents remain unchanged, and departed administrators’ delegation decisions live on long after they’ve left.
This accumulated “delegation debt” creates significant security risks. Recent ransomware incidents have demonstrated how attackers exploit unclear or forgotten AD delegations to move laterally through networks and escalate privileges. The challenge isn’t just about knowing your current AD delegation state – it’s about maintaining continuous visibility as your environment evolves.
A New Approach to AD Delegation Monitoring
It’s time to move beyond the traditional “set and forget” approach to AD delegation management. Our solution provides continuous, automated monitoring of your Active Directory delegation environment. Through integration with Microsoft Sentinel, we transform complex AD delegation data into actionable security intelligence.
Each day, the solution performs a comprehensive scan of your AD environment, capturing:
- Current delegation state across all organizational units
- Changes in privileged access rights
- Modified inheritance settings
- Custom permission assignments
Practical Implementation
We’ve designed this solution with real-world constraints in mind. It deploys through Azure Arc, using managed identities for enhanced security. There’s no need for additional firewall rules or complex network configurations.
The deployment process is straightforward:
- Deploy the data collection components through Azure
- Configure the monitoring scripts on your domain controllers
- Import the custom Sentinel workbook
- Start receiving delegation insights within hours
Immediate Benefits
Organizations implementing this solution often discover:
- Forgotten delegations from previous projects
- Over-privileged service accounts
- Inconsistent permissions across domain controllers
- Unauthorized changes that slipped through manual reviews
More importantly, they gain ongoing visibility into their AD delegation state, enabling proactive security management rather than reactive incident response.
Getting Started
The technical requirements are straightforward:
- Azure subscription
- Log Analytics workspace
- Microsoft Sentinel
- Azure Arc-enabled servers
We provide comprehensive documentation for self-implementation. For organizations preferring expert guidance, our professional services team can ensure a smooth deployment and knowledge transfer.
Take the First Step
Don’t let unclear AD delegations become your security weakness. Start your journey toward better Active Directory security today. Whether you choose to implement the solution yourself or work with our team, the important thing is to begin addressing this critical security gap.
Download our comprehensive implementation guide or contact us for a discussion about your specific environment.
Contact Us for a personalized consultation.
