Identities, computers and groups all need access to resources. But only enough to fulfill a role, and only for as long as they need it. AD Admins, IT leaders, VPs and CISOs recognize this as a foundational part of Zero Trust least privilege models – and as one of the biggest challenges for enterprises.
That’s because using native tools for privilege management is complex. They’re designed for one system only, without much of the interoperability and scalability needed for today’s hybrid environments. There’s less potential for automation and integration, slowing down everything from approvals to audits.
The resulting lack of end-to-end visibility and control also means increased risk exposure. After all, privileges are necessary for giving access to business-critical capabilities. Yet, directory security can be compromised by day-to-day operations such as:
- Internal mobility - At the employee level there will always be plenty of movement, whether employees move into new roles, depart the company, or new employees need onboarding. At an organizational level there can be mergers, acquisitions, new partnerships and third-party dissolutions. Each new development can mean existing privileges get overlooked or are left open without any control.
- Resource constraints - Relying on native tools to manage these changes, or using manual role-based access control, is laborious and takes up valuable time. Manual account changes or decommissioning can easily tumble down the to-do list in the face of strategic initiatives and pressures. Delegation can alleviate the pains but relies on related authorizations to be administered correctly.
The impact of unmanaged privilege sprawl
This combination of internal mobility and resource constraints soon leads to privilege sprawl.
That could mean an Active Directory (AD) user becoming an AD admin for a project without having the privileges reduced after project completion. Or a contractor being granted third-party access to a shared SharePoint folder without an expiry date for their access rights, allowing the contractor to continue viewing files indefinitely.
This accumulation of unnecessary privileged accounts not only creates further complexity in the identity environment but also broadens the attack surface for threat actors.
Standing privilege, where access privileges are left persistently open, is another risk. For example, let’s say a former IT Service Desk employee or team member retains Entra ID privileges after they’ve moved to a role in accounting. The business risks non-compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and other regulations that require access policies and protocols around appropriate data access, use and storage.
Imagine that an IT Service Desk employee had permanent assignment to the Global Administrator Entra ID role. However, they only need this for a few days each quarter to perform a regular user license review. They’ve had unnecessarily persistent access when they only needed access every three months, compromising efforts to ensure least privilege principles.
Improving security with privilege management
All of these scenarios offer multiple opportunities to threat actors seeking to gain unauthorized access. At a basic level, they may start by trying to view confidential files. Then, they may aim to gain elevated permissions to grant further privileges or exfiltrate sensitive data or intellectual property.
Of course, privilege is both necessary and risky. AD management has to control the identity environment without affecting operations. Here are six ways that businesses can benefit from correctly implemented privilege management.
Reduce privilege sprawl
For smaller organizations, or teams where employees rarely move departments or take on new responsibilities, rigid forms of access control can be enough to limit the attack surface. However, in a larger and more dynamic enterprise, there’s greater risk of privilege sprawl. Employees are more fluid, moving around or creating teams and launching new projects. With each new initiative, more identities – from applications to devices – start requiring access.
Automated identity management limits the risk of privilege sprawl by reducing the need for manual intervention. As employees move around the organization, automated management can guarantee that their privileged rights don't. The move to a unified, automated group management approach also supports Zero Trust least privilege models.
Eliminate standing privilege
The big challenge with standing privilege is that it’s ongoing. After a privilege has been granted or elevated, attackers have an always-open attack vector. What’s more, a successful breach using standing privilege makes it easier to move undetected throughout the network. If the accessed privileges have the ability to generate new accounts, more attackers can potentially infiltrate. Plus, the elevated privileges often come with more autonomy, making activity more difficult to monitor and audit.
Much like Zero Trust principles are fundamental to cybersecurity, the Zero Standing Privileges (ZSP) concept is similarly integral to successful privilege management, where users only have privileges granted temporarily and for specific purposes.
One course of action would be to set a threshold: for example, 30 days. At the conclusion of the threshold, administrators can receive email alerts that an action is needed. This could be to disable a privileged account or remove accounts from groups.
Increase visibility across all privileged accounts
Managing separate, disparate AD domains and tenants from different consoles is a reality for many companies, as these consoles are not built to support cross-environment visibility. The associated administrative burden resulting from managing each domain and tenant separately can be costly and resource intensive.
Consolidating the views into multiple AD domains and Entra ID tenants would dramatically simplify otherwise complex identity security and management processes. Not only would it streamline AD Management, but in doing so it would also reduce the occurrence of errors. Through automation of policy deployment and enforcement, organizations could be sure they are applied consistently across their AD/Entra ID environment. Here’s where privilege management comes in, controlling access granted to accounts – from account creation to deletion. While there are native tools in AD and Entra ID to achieve this, they should be supported with automation for user and group account management, so administrators can keep on top of access sprawl. Then it becomes possible to give users, objects and groups fine-grained access using dynamic delegation.
Just in time privilege
The more accounts that exist with elevated privileges, the larger the attack surface. However, maybe all those accounts need elevated access. So, reducing the number isn’t practical or possible. The answer is to adopt a just in time approach, where access – and related vulnerability exposure – will only be temporary.
This can be incorporated within AD security simply by removing users’ persistent admin access when no longer needed using AD Security Groups. When a user needs to complete an action required through elevated privileges with a just-in-time solution, it can be granted. Access is simplified across the full identity lifecycle, with efficiencies from predefined approval processes and workflows.
Reduce complexity of group management through roles and delegation
Groups may be nested inside privileged groups, with any child members potentially inheriting excessive parent privileges and access rights. By reducing complexity, it becomes possible to view paths of privilege escalation and identify potential attack pathways.
Escalating privileges through improper authentication was at the heart of the MOVEit security flaw discovered in July 2024. Organizations had to patch the vulnerability to prevent their environments’ vulnerability to potential unauthorized access. Privilege management can minimize the use of reactive patching-based defenses through the use of delegation. While the security posture stays centralized, privileges can be delegated to roles or individual employees to control and manage permissions.
Improve regulatory compliance
Managing privileges is a key requirement of many regulatory standards. The HIPAA Privacy Rule for the Healthcare industry refers to the minimum necessary standard for entities accessing and disclosing data. GDPR Article 5 specifies that data control and processing must be allowed “for no longer than is necessary.”
Centralized privileged management allows for single-pane tracking of identities. Change history and admin activity can be logged, including what changes were made, at what time and by which person. The right solution can also be used to define rules for monitoring compliance, trigger automated alerts for violations and provide a clear and transparent view of security posture.
Active Roles: AD/Entra ID Privilege management for the enterprise
For organizations with hybrid identity environments, Active Roles offers a way to improve the security posture and realize the six advantages outlined above.
Everything is done from a centralized console using a single pane of glass to protect, automate and unify administration. With Active Roles, you can implement a Zero Trust least privilege strategy and solve the challenges resulting from managing multiple AD and Entra ID domains and tenants using native tools.
Active Roles provides visibility across Microsoft AD and Entra ID tenants. Identity data can be synced to harden directory security with fine-grained privileged access and delegation for users and objects. You can maximize AD security by deploying and enforcing consistent provisioning across domains and tenants. Active Roles also allows you to use an RBAC model for delegating and deprovisioning privileges based on attributes.
Find out more about how Active Roles overcomes AD limitations. Or start a free trial today to see how you can stop unregulated access, automate account creation and reduce your attack surface.
