Managing an enterprise-level Active Directory (AD) means enterprise-grade volumes of identity accounts. Naturally, operations at this scale come with high complexity and call for intensive resources to maintain control. Manual errors can creep in as the business expands, leading to increased cybersecurity risks and vulnerabilities. While costs, especially to reputation, can be hard to quantify and measure, they’re estimated to be up to “1,000 times higher than if an incident is not detected and contained early."
There are plenty of steps you can take to mitigate these threats, whether you're an IT exec, AD leader, admin or VP. It starts with attestation. This is at the heart of simplifying and protecting your environment.
What is attestation?
As employees come and go, get promoted or move laterally, they often leave a trail of permissions and privileges. Identities created at onboarding may expire. Access via groups to systems and apps can be left open unnecessarily.
It’s up to resource owners to monitor for a disjointed identity ecosystem , verifying and certifying that their users remain correctly authorized. This process is attestation. On the surface, it’s a simple yes or no – but that’s where the simplicity ends.
Why attestation is important
Around 90% of global organizations rely on AD. Within most of their environments are thousands of interacting objects, complex or hidden user-system relationships, and legacy protocols leading to exploits through misconfigured policies.
As Microsoft points out, “With a single network logon, administrators can manage directory data and organization throughout their network.” Without a deep and granular defense, threat actors are left with a wide attack surface. This extends to the cloud, where AD syncs with Entra ID, accelerating the demand to resolve legacy risks.
That’s where attestation comes in. By attesting users, those responsible for networks can reduce the attack surface. They can support governance, for example, around complying with laws such as SOX that have strict requirements around controlling and limiting data access. They also help streamline permissions workflows to support Zero Trust implementations.
How attestation provides greater security
DCSync attacks make regular appearances in AD exploits. One reason is the availability of open-source credential dumping apps such as Mimikatz. These allow attackers to send domain controllers a request to initiate AD replication using a compromised high-privilege account.
To mitigate this risk, organizational AD accounts should be attested – in particular, Domain Administrators and others with ‘Replicating directory’ and ‘Replicating Directory Changes all’ permissions. These popular attack vectors are where standing privileges can leave organizations most vulnerable to unauthorized access across AD domains, Entra ID and Microsoft 365. That’s why many organizations are adding Active Roles to attestation protocols.
How to reduce complexity when managing large volumes of identity accounts
Applying attestation makes it possible to manage identity security through the single pane Active Roles offers. Tenants can ensure visibility for all users, objects and groups in AD and Entra ID – ensuring fine-grained privilege access and dynamic delegation.
To implement attestation starts with understanding how to create, manage and simplify group management.
Simplifying group management
- Dynamic group management: Active Roles allows for the creation of dynamic groups that control membership based on several rules and policies. Objects can be added via query, such as User Department = IT, and they can also be exclusionary. Members can also be added directly, including other AD groups, which creates nested membership. All these combined rules enforce tight control over group membership. They also automate the ongoing addition and removal of members as attributes change.
- Policy automation: Automation brings security and consistency to operations. This security and consistency boosts efficiency, allowing organizations to lighten the load placed on overworked IT service desks. Costs and resources can therefore be streamlined, and dynamic policy management can be enforced even as the business scales.
- Attestation: Attestation involves validating and attesting group membership statuses and appropriate or necessary access levels. This should include attesting group permissions, group existence and deprovisioning, if necessary.
- Streamline management: Start by assigning the right person as owner with responsibility for attestation. This may be a senior executive with the necessary authority, though it is sometimes more efficient to assign a user with a deeper understanding of daily needs.
Attestation and Active Roles: Combining for greater identity security and secure groups
Put these measures in place and you make gains across the entire business, hardening the security posture and optimizing identity account management. Here’s how Active Roles and attestation benefits play out in more detail.
Enhanced AD security with attestation
By adding systematic reviews of group memberships through Active Roles, security is consistently hardened across different AD domains, Entra ID and Microsoft 365 tenants. Sensitive data and systems are protected with a proactive and preventative approach, rather than a reactive one that requires fallout management.
The abstraction of permissions from Active Directory makes it easier to implement Zero Trust and principle of least privilege (PoLP) models. Privileged users can be granted just-in-time access simply by changing a virtual attribute in the user’s properties. Configurable workflows and customizable scripts are also available to support lifecycle management, from onboarding to expiration.
Increased group manager accountability
With group managers empowered to control memberships, there’s less reliance on central IT. The increased democratization means access is granted on role-based criteria using managers’ insights for top priorities. Data can also be analyzed more granularly to decipher what assets need attestation, ensuring resources are focused on the right areas.
This allows for more informed decisions when defining how to query identity attributes. Access can be granted on current roles and responsibilities to allow a more granular, scalable and robust defense with predefined rules.
Periodic validation with best practices
Periodic reviews of access have become increasingly important as data protection laws evolve – for example, HIPAA has multiple access-related proposals for 2025. With Active Roles now offering attestation capabilities, organizations gain an audit-ready trail of evidence that can be easily accessed. It comes with user activity tracking and change history that show who completed what attestations, when they were completed and any other changes that occurred during the process.
The increased visibility can help tackle the ongoing risk of nested groups in AD management. Of course, there are PowerShell scripts to help resolve these issues. But, for organizations with thousands of employees, when group creation isn’t linear, Active Roles can help bridge the gap and uncover any discrepancies before they require remediating.
Flexible views offer increased efficiency
Sometimes, an enterprise may want to design organizational units around a network infrastructure that isn’t based on geography or departments. However, in AD this would mean changing the directory tree structure. Active Roles solves this by offering Managed Units: dynamic and virtual collections of AD or Entra ID directory objects. With this custom logic, access and control can be delegated with rule-based admin views.
The resulting delegation and reduced reliance on IT teams for access and approval results in fewer potential bottlenecks across Entra ID and AD management. What’s more, existing teams can be redeployed for more value-based strategic activities. Along with the internal benefits, this will lead to increased benefits to service delivery and end user experience.
Future-proofed learning available on demand
The speed of emerging threats calls for a similarly fast-paced approach to the first line of AD defense: employees. That’s where Active Roles on-demand webinars and training meet the needs of modern professionals. Teams need the latest in AD tools and Entra ID security – and the flexibility to access continuous learning and development. Live forums and online communities are also available to share up-to-date Active Roles expertise and innovations.
Improved user experience and engagement
Behavioral change is at the heart of successful transformation and adoption of new technologies. Active Roles offers a customizable interface designed for users to complete admin-related activities. By simplifying complex processes, the user experience is optimized for boosting usage. Further ease of use comes from the synchronization with real-time updates from connectors including SCIM 2.0, ServiceNow, Workday, LDAP, Entra ID and many more.
Active Roles: Automation, attestation and user empowerment
At a time when more organizations are getting breached more and more often (78% of organizations compared to 63% two years ago), Active Roles offers an extra layer of security and stronger group and identity management.
Attestation and group security management can be automated, allowing more granular, rules-based controls for roles and attributes. Group memberships can be reviewed and attested systematically, rather than doing them painfully and manually. With the increased visibility, group managers can be empowered to take accountability, responsibility, and streamline decision-making. Even at audit time, Active Roles is able to surface granular activity and change logs to help organizations demonstrate compliance.
The focus on usability means greater democratization across departments. Workers can access the information they need at the right time, with less demand placed on IT teams that are already facing talent shortages. And when other non-technical employees need support or guidance, they have access to learning materials and on-demand access to industry-leading connectors.
Ready to explore how Active Roles can support your attestation and help you manage AD and Entra ID from one place? Take a virtual tour.
